DOCTORS across Craven have blasted health officials for providing an out-of-hours service that may be putting patients at serious risk.

Since October the responsibility for out-of-hours cover lies with Craven, Harrogate and Rural District (CHARD) Primary Care Trust.

It commissioned a service from North Yorkshire Emergency Doctors (NYED), which had provided the cover previously.

However, it has since gone into administration and CHARD has been forced to reduce the service to such an extent that GPs in Skipton and Bentham have written to the trust voicing their concerns.

Dr Christopher Craig, from Dyneley House Surgery in Skipton, said there was a lack of confidence in the out-of-hours service.

"We the GPs and the patients do not know what their commitments are," said Dr Craig.

He explained that before CHARD took over NYED had bases at Settle and Skipton so patients could be seen promptly.

Now the Settle base closes at 9.30pm on weekdays and 5pm at weekends, which means doctors at the Skipton centre have to cover for most of Craven outside these times.

Under the current service CHARD says that when a home visit is required "this will be provided within a time-frame of between one hour and six hours, depending on the urgency of the case". Dr Craig said that a wait of six hours to see a doctor was excessive.

He said that the main concern was about the issue of rurality and the difficulties that GPs faced having to cover a large geographical area often working with drivers who did not know Craven well.

He feared that an incident might arise where it took hours to diagnosis a child with meningitis, by which time it could be too late. He explained that parents could spend an hour trying to get through to NHS Direct, and then the doctor, believing it to be a virus, could take several hours to get to the child.

Dr Craig said that patients had a right to be seen by doctors within their own homes and this was especially important for terminally ill or elderly patients.

Dr Peter Whitehead, from Skipton's Fisher Medical Centre, explained that when the out-of-hours service was paid for by the GPs themselves it was at a cost of £14 per patient per year. Now, he claimed, the trust was trying to provide the same service at £6 per patient.

Dr Whitehead said that if the GPs had been asked to provide an out-of-hours service for £6 per patient they would have told the Government that they could not because it would be unsafe.

Bentham GPs have sent a statement to the trust, questioning the safety of one doctor covering such a large, rural geographical area, "particularly during periods of unusually high demand and in the event of simultaneous urgent visit requests at opposite ends of the area".

A spokesman for CHARD said that following the administration of NYED the trust had been working with GPs to maintain a continuity of service. He said that a further review of the service would be carried out in June to assess how the arrangements were working.

"We do recognise that there are real issues in North Craven due to the very rural nature of the area, poor road communications and a relatively small and widely dispersed population. Under the new arrangements, Castleberg Hospital in Giggleswick is the base of a mobile GP.

"The PCT remains completely committed to providing a clinically safe out-of-hours service for our patients wherever they live and will be happy to talk further to GPs if they still have concerns."