GPs are under pressure to provide emergency home visits to ease the crisis in overstretched A&E departments, NHS documents reveal.
Local doctors groups are being asked to establish “A&E Delivery Boards” and to draw up rotas of medics able to respond to 111 requests for urgent care at home.
The boards are ostensibly responsible for easing winter pressures, but the new NHS England best practice guidelines state the measures should remain in place all year round because of the unprecedented demand on hospitals.
Last month a Daily Telegraph investigation revealed that patients are being forced to wait for up to nine hours in ambulances because of the gridlock in A&E departments.
Full story in The Telegraph, 25 November 2016