Hot on the heels of a personal pledge by the Chief Executive of NHS England, Simon Stevens, to investigate the causes of soaring medical indemnity costs, a private firm has announced it has signed up two out-of-hours providers and a GP federation.

An insurance broker has announced that a GP federation formed of 15 practices has signed a deal that will save GPs an estimated 75 per cent compared with their previous combined indemnity costs, while two out-of-hours groups have also signed deals with profit-making companies. However, the established medical defence organisations (MDOs) said that the premiums signed with private companies might not necessarily provide the same level of indemnity as their own.

Mr Stevens made his pledge earlier this summer after being warned that fees of up to £30,000 a year for medical indemnity were causing doctors to leave the service and even leave the country. He said that the NHS might be able to tackle the issue of soaring fees at a national level and promised to look into the matter personally.

However, it is likely that the indemnity problem will get worse before it gets better, as the Government plans for seven-day access to GPs. In addition, out-of-hours providers have warned that they are struggling to fill shifts due to sharp rises in costs of GP defence subscriptions to cover out-of-hours shifts.

A spokesman for the private insurer believes that out-of-hours groups would save hundreds of thousands of pounds through signing up with them because they will have all their out-of hours shift work covered. He added that, given the claims record of the group in question, he could not see how the MDO premiums had increased so much and said that competition in the market could only be a good thing for GPs.