Bed-ridden patients with serious illnesses should not expect home visits as GPs are ‘too busy’, medics warn

PATIENTS who are bed-ridden with serious illnesses should no longer expect a home visit from their GP, medics warn.

Doctors — on an average salary of £113,000 a year — claim they are now too busy to see people outside the surgery.

1

They are demanding their NHS contracts are rewritten so home visits are not treated as core work.

And they say health chiefs should make alternative arrangements to ensure house-bound patients continue to get the care they need.

Kent Local Medical ­Committee, which works with the British Medical Association on policy, is calling for the change.

GP Andy Parkin, who put forward the motion, said: “It’s not to remove home visits if GPs want to. If there are truly house-bound patients or palliative care patients, I think GPs should still be able to do that.

“The key thing is to remove the expectation that home visits are a part of general practice.”

DRUGS DON’T WORK

Shock as Britain’s most commonly prescribed antidepressant ‘barely works’

VAPE ALERT

Boy, 16, nearly died after vaping caused ‘catastrophic’ lung damage in 5 months

Warning

GRIM REAPER

Docs pull 20cm blood clot from man’s lungs – after it moulded to block airways

SOUR VAPES

E-cigarettes are ‘JUST as dangerous to your heart as smoking’

Exclusive

MINI MIRACLES

World’s tiniest twin boys born at 23 weeks defy astonishing odds to survive

DON’T EAT YOUR HEART OUT

Eating dinner after 6PM could increase risk of heart disease

Prof Helen Stokes-Lampard, of the Royal College of GPs, said: “Home visits can be very time-consuming and take the GP away from the surgery when they could be seeing other patients, and where there are far better facilities to properly assess patients.”

Joyce Robins, of Patient Concern, described axing home GP visits for those too frail or sick to go to surgeries as “appalling”.