There will be major changes to GP contracts next year, including greater responsibility for out-of-hours care and a major reduction in box-ticking targets, according to Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt.

Speaking at a conference on the future of primary care, Mr Hunt said that the NHS will be unsustainable unless there is a profound reform of out-of-hospital care, so the issue must be tackled as a matter of urgency.

Changes to the contract will include a ‘dramatic simplification’ in targets and incentives, so that the bureaucracy associated with a GPs work will be considerably less.

Mr Hunt also announced that additional funding will be channelled to general practice to help support GPs’ new responsibilities, and will come from savings made by a reduction in unplanned admissions.

In addition, he expanded on the new ‘named clinician’ role being brought in next April to cover vulnerable and elderly patients. This will involve GPs taking overall responsibility for patients’ care, ensuring they have proper care plans, proactively managing their care and deciding how out-of-hours care should be managed in their area.

Mr Hunt repeated his view that changes to the GP contract introduced in 2004, which allowed practices to opt out of direct responsibility for out of hours care, were a mistake, and that the new ‘named GP’ role represents a return to a traditional model of general practice, lost as a result of the additional demands of the 2004 contract.

However, he added that the Department of Health (DH) needs to go further than just having named GPs, so he is planning to empower doctors to be proactive in their care of patients such as these.

Making these changes will mean that the NHS will have to expand the general workforce. Health Education England has already been asked to recruit an additional 2,000 GPs and increase the proportion of medical students choosing general practice to 50 per cent. However, Mr Hunt said that the numbers may have to be increased further.