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Out of Hours Doctors Reluctant to Do Home Visits, Say Patients
November 30, 2007 at 11:30 AM
General Health News
Researchers held group discussions and carried out telephone interviews with 27 patients who had recently used one of three services providing general practice cover in the evenings and weekends in England.
Under the new GP contract, which came into effect in 2004, most GP practices handed over responsibility for providing care out of hours to the local primary care organisation.
Instead, patients are redirected to dedicated services, which may offer telephone advice, home visits, or an appointment at a treatment centre.
Two of the services covered up to 300,000 people in three primary care trusts, while one covered almost 1 million people from eight primary care trusts.
Once patients had got through and had actually spoken to a healthcare professional, they were generally happy with the quality of service they received.
But many said they were uncertain as to the appropriateness of their call or even how the service worked.
Half said they felt guilty about calling amid fears that they might be wasting the doctors time or abusing the system.
They assumed that these services had too few staff covering too wide an area and were often misused by people with minor complaints.
Patients were most worried by the slow speed with which they felt cases were handled and the time it took before they were called back or a home visit was made.
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