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<p>Evening and weekend general practice appointments are routinely available across
the country to enable patients to find appointments at a time convenient to them,
with millions of patients having already benefitted from this.</p><p>Care UK is the
provider for both the Out of Hours (OOH) and the 111 service for Surrey. Since April
2019 NHS North West Surrey Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) has been the lead commissioner
for OOH general practitioner (GP) services for North West Surrey, Surrey Downs, Guildford
and Waverley and East Surrey CCGs.</p><p>There are eight Primary Care Centres in Surrey
that are involved in the provision of OOH services.</p><p>The Woking Out of Hours
primary care centre provides OOH services on Monday-Friday 19:00-23:59 and 08:00-23:59
at weekends and bank/public holidays. This service has not changed since the new contract
began at the end of March 2019. There are no plans to change the current contracted
hours of opening or operation for Woking.</p><p>North West Surrey CCG has advised
that the following steps have been put in place to maintain the level of OOH GP cover
in Surrey:</p><p>- Direct booking being made available for extended access hubs through
111;</p><p>- Ongoing recruitment/pro-active skill mix, including GPs, advanced nurse
practitioners, urgent care practitioners, and dental and mental health nurses;</p><p>-
The NHS Community Pharmacist Consultation Service, allowing patients to be referred
to pharmacists for minor ailments;</p><p>- Pharmacists able to issue prescriptions
and repeat prescriptions out of hours;</p><p>- Collaborative working with the GP federation
and primary care networks; and</p><p>- Looking at activity versus productivity going
into winter and whether extra resources will be needed.</p><p> </p><p>NHS England
is undertaking a national review of access to general practice services, to improve
patient access and reduce unwarranted variation in experience. The NHS Long Term Plan
made a clear commitment to the future of general practice, with primary and community
care set to receive at least £4.5 billion more a year by 2023/24 in real terms. This
was followed by the five-year GP contract framework, which will provide greater financial
security and certainty for practices to plan ahead.</p>
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