This weekend it was reported GPs have voted to reduce visits to patients’ homes. During a meeting of the English Medical Committee, Doctors supported the proposal to reduce home visits.

This means The British Medical Association (BMA) will now lobby NHS England to stop home visits being a contractual obligation.

On Saturday BBC News reports said: “According to NHS Digital, in one month in 2018, GPs in England made 238,579 home visits out of a total of 27,084,027 appointments.”

Highly skilled and experienced Advanced Practitioners could alleviate some of the pressures faced by services

Hallam Medical’s Managing Director Deborah McCain said that in her experience using highly skilled Advanced Practitioners (AP); Advanced Nurse Practitioners (ANP), Advanced Clinical Practitioners (ACP) and Emergency Care Practitioners (ECP) could be a way to support GPs and alleviate some of the pressures facing their services.

Deb said: “At Hallam Medical we have worked with Advanced Practitioners for more than 12 years and have been at the forefront of Advanced Practice during this time. We recognise and appreciate the value APs can and do add to a service.

She added: “The ACP role involves high levels of autonomy and critical thinking many of our clients already use Advanced Practitioners to help alleviate the pressure on GPs Practices and working with our clients and their patients they form an integral part of their home visiting service. We have extensive experience in setting up Home Visiting Services for our clients and they have delivered successful outcomes.”

We have extensive experience in setting up Home visiting Services 

Simon Harris, the Managing Director at Derbyshire Health United (DHU) Urgent Care said that they had used Advanced Practitioners within their Home visiting services and both their primary and urgent care settings for more than two years.

Simon said: “We have seen the benefits these practitioners can offer our patients. They work autonomously and part of a wider team in some locations and can seek advice and support from GPs as required with any diagnosis or prescribing issues.”

Advanced Practitioners bring complementary expertise to the wider team

IC24 Chief Nurse, Rachel Robinson said IC24 is driving a culture of multi-disciplinary team working in both primary and urgent care services.

Rachel said:  “Our patients present to these services with a wide variety of symptoms, so it makes perfect sense to offer patients a wide variety of clinical expertise working together for patients to gain the best outcome. We use Advanced Practitioners from a number of disciplines and all of these professionals bring complementary expertise to the wider team.”

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