Portsmouth City Teaching Primary Care Trust is today ranked bottom in the region and in the worst 18 per cent of trusts nationally in a major review of services by health watchdog the Healthcare Commission.

It is among 28 trusts branded 'least well performing' in the review, which assessed GP out-of-hours services, emergency departments, walk-in centres, minor injuries units, ambulance services and urgent care provided by doctors.

The health watchdog looked at how services are accessed and delivered, how they work together to provide effective and efficient care to patients and how they are managed.

The trust-run out-of-hours GP service for people who fall ill at night or weekends is singled out for criticism for taking too long to assess patients.

It is also among the worst performing for the number of face-to-face assessments carried out within two hours of an urgent call.

And the trust is in the bottom nine per cent in the country for passing on medical notes to patients' GPs by 8am the morning after a call.

Health experts argue the report is based on outdated figures from 2006 and 2007, and that a major overhaul of out-of-hours service has since led to improvements.

The Healthcare Commission will now visit the trust to help develop a plan to improve its performance.

Katherine Murphy, from patient group the Patients Association, said: 'The Healthcare Commission has highlighted a key failing in the trust's duty to provide care to patients in Portsmouth.

'The trust board needs to be held accountable for making improvements - it's not fair on patients.

'I congratulate the Healthcare Commission on highlighting this very serious issue where there has been a failure of local services in Portsmouth.'

Judy Hillier, the trust's director of clinical and community services, said: 'We are very disappointed with these results. But we do warmly welcome the fact that the Healthcare Commission will visit us because this gives us the opportunity to demonstrate the quality of the out-of-hours service that we provide today, where we are consistently exceeding most targets.

'It also gives us the chance to talk about the improvements we have made in the last year.'

clare.semke

@thenews.co.uk