OXFORDSHIRE GPS are anxious about Government plans to hand responsibility for a controversial out-of-hours service to them.

The out-of-hours service provides urgent medical cover from 6.30pm to 8am on weekdays and round the clock at weekends and bank holidays.

Since 2004, the responsibility for the call-outs has been handled by NHS Oxfordshire, the county’s primary trust.

It subcontracts it out to a team of doctors based at Witney, Banbury, Oxford City and Abingdon who work for a independent health company.

New health secretary Andrew Lansley outlined plans to hand the contracting of the urgent care services back to GPs across the country.

They may have to cover it themselves or contract the service out.

Oxfordshire doctors said the move would just be “shifting the blame” for the service, which has received an average of one formal complaint every two weeks in the past two years, to them.

They also claimed their daytime service had become harder since they last performed an out-of-hours service more than a decade ago.

Prit Buttar, a GP at the Abingdon Surgery, said: “Before it was just something GPs had traditionally done alongside their daytime work.

“But with daytime work getting more complex and much harder, people can’t face working 40 to 50-hour weeks then doing out-of-hours call-outs on top.

“I’m concerned that unless adequate resources are provided giving us commissioning responsibilities, it will just be giving us the blame.”

Dr Tim Ringrose, medical director of Abingdon-based website, Doctors.net.uk, said: “This is causing a great deal of discussion.

“Some people are concerned and are saying look, we are already working really hard.

“We’re now working 10 to 12 hours a day and it looks like we’ll have to take back out of hours as well. I think if GPs are going to be commissioning out-of-hours we need to know where the money’s coming from and how much is going to be available.”

Dr Joe McManners, who practises in Headington, Oxford, said GPs needed to know more.

He added: “I am worried that they are pushing for more private companies to do out of hours which has caused problems in some places.”

In February the Oxford Mail revealed four GPs handle out-of-hours cover on weekday nights for Oxfordshire’s 600,000 residents.

But a regular out-of-hours user, Alison Redmayne, of North Oxford, who has a damaged bladder lining, said: “It’s not like it used to be when you could call your own GP and they’d know your history and exactly what the problem was.

“On the whole I’ve found the current service very badly organised.”

NHS Oxfordshire said it was waiting to see how the coalition government’s plans were to be implemented and added there were no “immediate plans” to change the out-of-hours service.

A Department of Health spokesperson said the government is committed to putting GPs in charge of commissioning local health services.

“This will mean that they will be responsible for ensuring the best out-of-hours care for patients.

“If GPs are responsible for their own budgets, and have to commission out-of-hours care themselves, they would be able to decide how far to provide these services themselves, or commission services from others.”