Dr Annette Carruthers, AM, one of the inaugural clinical directors of GP Access After Hours, said current plans to close the service's Calvary Mater clinic and reduce hours at the others was the "most serious threat" the service had faced in more than 18 years.

She wants Hunter New England Health to reinstate its financial support for GP Access, and to "recognise the value" of the large number of patients the service sees from its emergency departments.

"Many of the staff in the emergency departments are really, genuinely concerned about the impact this will have on their wait times," Dr Carruthers said. "Even if the decision makers aren't.

"A doctor has told us that while working in the emergency department this month - when a GP Access shift was not operating at short notice - the usual wait of two-to-three hours extended to seven. The whole point of this is that we take less seriously ill people away from the emergency department so they can concentrate on the seriously ill ones. It is really very logical."

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Dr Carruthers said hearing the news the federal government was sitting on a report that recommended funding for the service be brought back in line with similar - but different - after hours services nationally was "really worrying".

"It is bringing us back to mediocrity," she said. "That's how I feel about it; that we have to dumb it down to the rest of the country, not recognise and celebrate something that actually does a really good job. It is actually the best after-hours service in the country. There are similar versions, but they don't have all the bells and whistles ours has, and it is those bells and whistles that make it so successful.

Dr Carruthers said when GP Access was first established, it was "very strongly supported" by Professor Katherine McGrath - who was the chief of the Hunter Area Health Service at the time.

"She really understood the benefit for the hospital system as well in that, by being co-located with emergency departments, we could also see people who arrived in the ED with minor conditions - what we call category 4 and 5 presentations," she said.

"Katherine was more than willing to provide funding, which was approximately $400,000 in the day, to support the service. And it has worked incredibly successfully over the years."

But Dr Carruthers said she would also like to see the federal government fund the service at the level it needs to provide the service it does.

Instead of bringing what the Hunter does in line with the rest of the country's after hours services, perhaps the others should be brought up to the same standard as GP Access to improve access to primary care across the whole country.

"We have to make the community realise it is both federal and state - not one or the other - that benefits from this, and to stop this buck-shifting," she said. "Lets make the right decision."

Do you know more? Email anita.beaumont@newcastleherald.com.au.

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