NHS England said last month that it will cover the indemnity costs of GPs working out-of-hours shifts until April as part of a pilot scheme, after the body admitted that costs are ‘often a barrier to recruit’.

The announcement came after significant winter demand pushed GP out-of-hours and NHS 111 providers to work together to explore ways to get more GPs to support contact centres at peak times and follows a study published late last year that said almost half of GPs are turning down out-of-hours shifts because of the high cost of indemnity cover.

Where a provider is an NHS provider, GP indemnity can be covered through the NHS Litigation Authority but NHS England is piloting a scheme with the main medical defence organisations to reimburse indemnity costs to GPs committing to new out-of-hours sessions up to 7 April 2015.

Medical defence organisations have said that premiums have risen because of an increased risk of claims, as legal complaints against GPs reached record highs last year. Unfortunately, this trend could be set to continue, with a leading primary care academic warning that GPs are likely to face litigation from ‘ambulance chasers’ due to electronic patient record access.

According to Professor Tom Marshall, professor of public health and primary care at the University of Birmingham, GPs have to be more prepared to justify decisions departing from agreed NICE guidelines, as electronic records will be easier to search by lawyers looking for examples of potential medical negligence.

With GPs having to provide electronic access to all summary care records by next month and full access to coded information by April next year, Professor Marshall has said there could be “previously unforeseen consequences for medical litigation”.