Scotland could introduce measures to get practices to open on public holidays, it has been announced.

The Scottish government yesterday announced a review of how health and social care services are provided over public holidays.

But GP leaders urged the government to be “incredibly careful” not to make life harder for the country’s GPs.

The move echoes the controversy in England where Prime Minister Theresa May sought to blame the mid-winter NHS crisis on practices being closed at weekends.

It also follows a national review of out of hours’ services in Scotland.

The Scottish government promised to involve the Academy of the Medical Royal Colleges in the project.

But Dr Alan McDevitt, who chairs the British Medical Association’s GP committee in Scotland, said local health boards “should be capable” of putting staff and resources in place to manage public holidays.

He added: ìIn the midst of severe difficulties in recruiting and retaining GPs, we need to be incredibly careful not to do anything that risks making a career as a GP less attractive and undermines efforts to ensure we have enough GPs to meet Scotlandís needs.

“Vacancy rates at GP practices are already running at around 28% and we simply cannot afford that situation to get even worse.

It is important to remember that if a patient needs to see a GP on evenings, weekends and public holidays then the out of hours’ service is already there to ensure that they are able to do so.”

Scottish health secretary Shona Robison said: ìIt is important to recognise that thousands of NHS, social care, independent and third sector staff work extremely hard over public holidays throughout the year – providing a lifeline of care and support to patients throughout Scotland.

While staff have been very busy over the last few weeks, as we tend to see in early January, it is to their credit that A&E performance has been maintained at similar levels to last year ñ and is significantly outperforming other parts of the UK.”

She added: ìServices such as pharmacy, social work, GP, NHS 24, and hospital services including diagnostics, all have an important role to play in ensuring the smooth discharge of patients or avoiding unnecessary hospital admissions.

With health and social care services now integrated, it is a fitting time to do this work. This is not about asking our doctors, nurses, social workers, pharmacists, or paramedics to work even harder, this is about looking at how we work in different, integrated ways to benefit both patients and service providers.