GP leaders have reacted in dismay to a Scottish parliamentary report pressing for extended opening hours for practices.

Scottish parliamentarians said they were calling for a “radical revision” of primary care – but their proposals reopened the long-running controversy from the last decade about claims that practice opening times are unfriendly for patients. The report says the five day a week, nine to five service must become “a thing of the past” and that new arrangements must fit the needs of users. The Health and Sports Committee said they had taken significant evidence from members of the public. Their report also questions the feasibility of Scotland increasing GP numbers by 800 over the next decade, calling for development of multi-disciplinary teams instead.

Committee convenor Lewis Macdonald said: “It is clear that when it comes to primary care the status quo is no longer an option. Existing ways of delivering care are not only financially unsustainable but have failed to keep pace with modern life. We need to radically rethink primary care so that we can ensure our citizens receive the best possible care for generations to come. We must move away from the automatic provision of prescriptions and towards social prescribing. There must be widespread adoption of a preventative model of delivering care and the health service must fully embrace new technology.”

The Royal College of GPs said the report failed to recognise the “hard work” of the country’s out of hours service. Scottish joint chair Dr David Shackles said: “GPs and the wider multidisciplinary primary care team work exceptionally hard day in, day out, to meet the varied and complex needs of their patients. While we agree that improvements can and should be made to ensure that primary care can deliver patient-centred care now and in the future, it is simply not the case that this will be achieved by extending the opening times of GP surgeries.”

He added: “For many years, we have been calling for a national conversation to take place with the public on what the NHS can reasonably and sustainably deliver in the modern age. We have also been calling for a campaign to improve patients’ understanding of what changes to the delivery of primary care will mean for them. We are pleased to see these recommendations included.”