If practice areas expand significantly and a few patients a long way from the practice request home visits, it will adversely affect quality of care for the far larger number of patients near the practice.
Patients at the surgery will be kept waiting for an hour or more while an on-call doctor visits a sick patient a long way from the practice during a surgery. It will greatly increase the doctor's stress levels and stressed doctors do not make good doctors.
There are already numerous initatives to improve quality of care in all practices and that is the right approach. That way all patients receive good care from a GP near their home, without the need to register with one miles away.
The government should be supporting practices everywhere with increased funding to drive up standards where they are suboptimal.
I strongly favour allowing smaller practices to thrive in order to ensure that care can be provided close to the patient's home.
Dr John Pike, Bristol
