Hancock rejects GP vote to remove home visits from contracts

Health Secretary Matt Hancock has ruled out scrapping home visits by GPs, describing the idea as “a complete non-starter”.

Doctors argued that they were no longer able to provide home visits as part of their core work and voted at a conference on Friday to remove them from their NHS contract. Under the proposals GPs would negotiate a separate service for urgent visits to patients. However, the health secretary said he was strongly opposed to the plans and insisted that they would not come to fruition.

“The idea that people shouldn’t be able, when they need it, to have a home visit from a GP is a complete non-starter and it won’t succeed in their negotiations,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

He admitted that most home visits were done by nurses but said that on some occasions a GP was needed.

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Source: The Independent, 24 November 2019