{
  "url": "https://openlegislation.uk/general-medical-and-pharmaceutical-services-amendment-regulations-northern-ireland-1997/note",
  "json_url": "https://openlegislation.uk/general-medical-and-pharmaceutical-services-amendment-regulations-northern-ireland-1997/note.json",
  "legislation": "nisr/1997/190",
  "legislation_title": "General Medical and Pharmaceutical Services (Amendment) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 1997",
  "legislation_url": "https://openlegislation.uk/general-medical-and-pharmaceutical-services-amendment-regulations-northern-ireland-1997",
  "path": "note",
  "kind": "note",
  "number": null,
  "heading": "Explanatory note",
  "text": "(This note is not part of the Regulations.)\nThese Regulations further amend the Health and Personal Social Services (General Medical and Pharmaceutical Services) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 1973 (“the principal Regulations”).\nThe amendment to the principal Regulations contained in regulation 2 is consequential upon regulation 4.\nRegulation 3 amends the principal Regulations to provide for a scheme to protect the viability of essential medical practices in isolated rural areas.\nRegulation 4 amends the doctors' terms of service in relation to a doctor’s obligations where he uses the services of an organisation providing deputy doctors. While a doctor has to notify the Board of any arrangements he may make with such an organisation, he no longer has to obtain the prior consent of the Board. The Regulations require a doctor himself to ensure that the services provided by an organisation providing deputy doctors are adequate and appropriate and that its doctors are suitably qualified and trained and have not been either disqualified or suspended from practice by the Tribunal. There is provision enabling the Board to ask a doctor for evidence that he is complying with this obligation, to alert the doctor to any concerns it may have and, if need be, to require the doctor to bring his arrangement with an organisation providing deputy doctors to an end.\nRegulation 5 removes information about a doctor’s health promotion activities from the list of information which doctors are required to include in their annual reports to Boards.\nRegulation 6 substitutes a new Schedule 5 in the principal Regulations to provide for a re-constitution of the Medical Committee.",
  "extent": null,
  "status": null,
  "version": "current",
  "annotations": [],
  "outstanding_effects": [],
  "provenance": {
    "source": "legislation.gov.uk",
    "source_url": "https://www.legislation.gov.uk/nisr/1997/190/note",
    "retrieved_at": "2026-10-29T02:29:15.820496+00:00"
  },
  "licence": "Open Government Licence v3.0",
  "licence_url": "https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/",
  "attribution": "Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Source: legislation.gov.uk, The National Archives."
}