Care Homes and GPs, what's the relationship?

According the NHS guidance, every Care Home in England should now have a dedicated GP surgery assigned to it.

The GP is meant to visit the home every week, get to know the residents and help avoid any unnecessary hospital admissions.

Before Covid, we visited 24 Care Homes in Medway to see for ourselves how this new GP service was working and what the benefits were.

• 60% of care homes had a GP who visited regularly

• Five homes didn’t have regular GP visits

• 60% of staff spoke positively about the improvements for residents since the enhanced GP service started

• 52% of homes didn’t have a dentist who visited residents regularly