By . Sophie Borland . PUBLISHED: . 16:36 EST, 13 May 2013 . | . UPDATED: . 01:30 EST, 14 May 2013 . GPs are being paid £1,350 a shift to work for Britain’s biggest out-of-hours care provider. Documents seen by the Mail reveal Harmoni has been offering doctors £150 an hour for a nine-hour shift because managers are so desperate to cover evenings and weekends. They are also offering GPs a £1,000 bonus for referring a friend to work for the service. Lucrative business: Harmoni, Britain's biggest out of hours care provider, is paying doctors £150 an hour for a nine-hour shift because managers are so desperate to cover evenings and weekends . The shocking revelation  comes a day after the Mail told how in one county, Harmoni was using just one advanced nurse practitioner to cover up to 250,000 patients overnight. But despite mounting concern about out-of-hours care, the Health Secretary insisted family doctors should still not be forced to work outside normal office hours. In a statement, Jeremy Hunt said GPs should not ‘necessarily’ be on call at evenings and weekends – as they were a decade ago – because ‘they work hard, they have families and they need a life’. Under Labour’s 2004 renegotiation of their contracts, GPs were allowed to hand responsibility for out-of-hours care to private firms such as Harmoni. But many GPs refuse to work for Harmoni, which has contracts in London, the South East, the Midlands and the West Country, because they are unhappy about care standards. Unless managers offer what are described as ‘market rates’, rotas would not be filled. Out of hours services: The shocking revelation comes a day after the Mail told how in one county, Harmoni was using just one advanced nurse practitioner to cover up to 250,000 patients overnight . The documents seen by the Mail include an email from a senior manager working for Harmoni which reveals how doctors have been offered bonuses for referring a friend. The memo, sent last year, reads: ‘I would remind you that there remains a £1,000 bonus fee for staff who successfully introduce a colleague to the service.’ As Harmoni and the other firms are paid by the NHS to provide out-of-hours care, this money effectively comes from the taxpayer. The documents also include desperate emails sent by managers to GPs begging them to work shifts that start in just two hours. One, with the subject line ‘Urgent Cover Need [sic] Today’, was sent to doctors at 11.43am asking them to fill two shifts, one of which started at 2pm that day. Matthew Sinclair, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: ‘This is an astonishing amount of money to pay for just one shift. ‘Not only does this place a huge burden on the NHS and taxpayers, excessive pay could encourage staff to work though the night regardless of their circumstances.’ There is concern that out-of-hours care is so poor that an extra four million patients are flooding A&E units each year because they have nowhere else to go. Yesterday the Mail published a series of allegations from a whistleblower, a GP who has worked for Harmoni in Somerset, which included claims that terminally ill cancer sufferers were being made to wait eight hours for pain relief. He also revealed how the firm was using advanced nurse practitioners to cover districts of up to 150 square miles when GPs could not be found. Referring to doctors’ hourly pay rates, a spokesman for Harmoni said: ‘We pay market rates which are appropriate for the day and time of shift being offered.’ Mr Hunt, who is overseeing a review of how the system must be improved, said yesterday: ‘It was a historic mistake to remove responsibility for those services from GPs as part of a contract renegotiation in 2004. ‘Not because family doctors should necessarily go back to being on-call in evenings and weekends; they work hard, they have families and they need a life too. ‘But when responsibility for those services moved outside the GP practice, the personal accountability for 24/7 access to general practice was destroyed.’
GPs are reluctant to work for out-of-hours care provider Harmoni because they are unhappy about standards .
The firm even offers a £1,000 bonus to any doctor on their books who successfully refers a friend to work for the service .
By . Sophie Borland . PUBLISHED: . 16:36 EST, 13 May 2013 . | . UPDATED: . 01:30 EST, 14 May 2013 . GPs are being paid £1,350 a shift to work for Britain’s biggest out-of-hours care provider. Documents seen by the Mail reveal Harmoni has been offering doctors £150 an hour for a nine-hour shift because managers are so desperate to cover evenings and weekends. They are also offering GPs a £1,000 bonus for referring a friend to work for the service. Lucrative business: Harmoni, Britain's biggest out of hours care provider, is paying doctors £150 an hour for a nine-hour shift because managers are so desperate to cover evenings and weekends . The shocking revelation  comes a day after the Mail told how in one county, Harmoni was using just one advanced nurse practitioner to cover up to 250,000 patients overnight. But despite mounting concern about out-of-hours care, the Health Secretary insisted family doctors should still not be forced to work outside normal office hours. In a statement, Jeremy Hunt said GPs should not ‘necessarily’ be on call at evenings and weekends – as they were a decade ago – because ‘they work hard, they have families and they need a life’. Under Labour’s 2004 renegotiation of their contracts, GPs were allowed to hand responsibility for out-of-hours care to private firms such as Harmoni. But many GPs refuse to work for Harmoni, which has contracts in London, the South East, the Midlands and the West Country, because they are unhappy about care standards. Unless managers offer what are described as ‘market rates’, rotas would not be filled. Out of hours services: The shocking revelation comes a day after the Mail told how in one county, Harmoni was using just one advanced nurse practitioner to cover up to 250,000 patients overnight . The documents seen by the Mail include an email from a senior manager working for Harmoni which reveals how doctors have been offered bonuses for referring a friend. The memo, sent last year, reads: ‘I would remind you that there remains a £1,000 bonus fee for staff who successfully introduce a colleague to the service.’ As Harmoni and the other firms are paid by the NHS to provide out-of-hours care, this money effectively comes from the taxpayer. The documents also include desperate emails sent by managers to GPs begging them to work shifts that start in just two hours. One, with the subject line ‘Urgent Cover Need [sic] Today’, was sent to doctors at 11.43am asking them to fill two shifts, one of which started at 2pm that day. Matthew Sinclair, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: ‘This is an astonishing amount of money to pay for just one shift. ‘Not only does this place a huge burden on the NHS and taxpayers, excessive pay could encourage staff to work though the night regardless of their circumstances.’ There is concern that out-of-hours care is so poor that an extra four million patients are flooding A&E units each year because they have nowhere else to go. Yesterday the Mail published a series of allegations from a whistleblower, a GP who has worked for Harmoni in Somerset, which included claims that terminally ill cancer sufferers were being made to wait eight hours for pain relief. He also revealed how the firm was using advanced nurse practitioners to cover districts of up to 150 square miles when GPs could not be found. Referring to doctors’ hourly pay rates, a spokesman for Harmoni said: ‘We pay market rates which are appropriate for the day and time of shift being offered.’ Mr Hunt, who is overseeing a review of how the system must be improved, said yesterday: ‘It was a historic mistake to remove responsibility for those services from GPs as part of a contract renegotiation in 2004. ‘Not because family doctors should necessarily go back to being on-call in evenings and weekends; they work hard, they have families and they need a life too. ‘But when responsibility for those services moved outside the GP practice, the personal accountability for 24/7 access to general practice was destroyed.’
Britain’s biggest out-of-hours care provider. offering GPs a £1,000 bonus for referring a friend to work for the service. Lucrative and the West Country, because they are unhappy staff who successfully introduce a colleague to