A HEALTHCARE service has been deemed “unsafe” after a leaked email revealed just two on-call GPs covered a population of more than 1.4million.

One terminally ill patient, who was classed as “actively dying”, had to wait 6½ hours to be seen by a doctor.

The email was sent by a manager to other bosses at out-of-hours provider IC24.

It showed the entire county of Kent had only two doctors for a whole night — meaning hundreds of people went without vital treatment.

Lesley Williams sent her message at 8am — when 130 people were still waiting for advice, 67 needed to be seen and nine visits were pending throughout the county, except for in the Swale and Medway districts.

She said: “Having seen the screen myself this morning I need to let you know that the service is currently unsafe and has been overnight.

“We had two GPs and one advanced nurse (ANP) practitioner in East Kent and two ANPs in West Kent overnight.”

She also expressed doubts there would be clinicians in Maidstone that morning, any cover in Canterbury in the afternoon and any doctors based at Dover or Margate that evening.

IC24, which also covers Sussex, Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex and Northamptonshire, said mobile clinicians had filled gaps in Kent on September 8/9.

It also claimed it was exceeding obligations on staffing levels.

The Kent Care Commissioning Groups said: “We monitor the performance of the out-of-hours provider daily and there have been no serious incidents reported.

“The delays experienced by two palliative care patients were reviewed to ensure no harm was caused.”