When the health service was reconfigured to prepare for the anticipated surge in coronavirus patients, one of the key elements of this strategy was the establishment of ten Covid centres across Northern Ireland.
These centres, which are led by GPs who work on a rota basis, assess suspected coronavirus patients and refer them to hospital or send them home to self-isolate. No testing for Covid-19 is provided in the centres which are aimed at keeping infection out of doctors' surgeries.
Even though the number of people attending the Covid centres has fallen sharply in recent weeks, GPs are still required to staff the units. According to the Department of Health, the facilities 'continue to play a key role' in ensuring that patients with coronavirus symptoms can be assessed and treated by a GP.
However, this view is not shared by more than 100 family doctors who have taken the unusual step of signing an open letter to health minister Robin Swann expressing their 'serious concerns' about the centres.
The letter, published in the Irish News yesterday, suggests that many GPs working in the centres are seeing few if any patients and estimate the cost to the NHS of each patient seen is a minimum of £1,000.
The GPs say many practices have not sent a single patient to a Covid centre while the unavailability of swab testing, access to X-rays and blood tests further limits their usefulness.
What is clear from this message is that family doctors are desperate to get back to their primary role of taking care of their patients and want to be released from the requirement to provide cover at the centres.
There is no doubt the health minister should listen carefully to the views of these GPs, who work in surgeries across the north.
They are deeply concerned about delays in treating people with urgent conditions and warn there are 'major issues' rapidly looming for general practice and for patients.
Of course the health authorities need to be ready to deal with further outbreaks of infection but there also has to be sufficient flexibility in the system to ensure the best use of limited resources.
Is it absolutely necessary to have all the Covid centres fully staffed or is scaling down an option? Does it not make more sense to free doctors to go where patient demand is?
More than 100 medics have raised serious questions about the centres and their concerns must be addressed.
