Part of 3. 2. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Health, Well-being and Sport – in the Senedd at 2:54 pm on 25 January 2017.
Cabinet Secretary, you talked about making the service more sustainable, the GP service and, indeed, the out-of-hours service. Obviously, the backbone of that is having doctors on the ground who can perform the service when it’s required. I heard, in a previous answer that you gave to Nathan Gill, about the insurance, and indemnity insurance in particular, for doctors who are coming to the end of their career who might wish to practise part time and could offer this service back into the NHS, thus alleviating some of the staff pressures. Are you going to bring forward a national indemnity insurance scheme, such as is available in other parts of the UK that is paid out of the NHS risk pool? This would go a long way towards actually tapping into that huge resource of retired doctors who would wish to continue to practise but, because of the cost they face in insuring themselves, it is just not financially viable for them to do that.