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Under any new contractual arrangements core and non-core services should be separated and the in hours and out of hours parts of the contract should be split. These decisions emerged after last week's meeting of the General Medical Services Committee, which was devoted to discussing various options in open forum and in working groups.

As a result of the 1990 general practitioner contract and the NHS reforms there is increasing support among general practitioners for other contractual options. And the chairman of the General Medical Services Committee, Dr Ian Bogle, has always insisted that the recent out of hours agreement was only an interim measure.

Each of the eight working groups completed a questionnaire, which included questions on the independent contractor status, salaried employment, commissioning for the provision of general medical services, and patient access to general practitioner services, as well as one on priorities for negotiations--separation of core and non-core services came top of the list. The results of the day's deliberations will be drawn together and taken back to the GMSC before being sent out to local medical committees (LMCs) for consultation. Several members supported the idea of a special LMC conference in the spring of 1996, but Dr Bogle said that the important thing was to get the document right.