Drs being paid £10 for home Covid vaccine vacs

had her jab. Afaik, no one got hit!

My mum (finally!) hit her jab this morning. A young doctor came to the house to do it. He’s working all weekend and tomorrow and Tuesday just doing home visit vaccines. The two main partners in the practice have just retired so these are doctors new to the area, they don’t yet know their way around the tiny streets of town or the hilly glens of the rural hinterlands. And they’re grappling through blizzards and ice.

They’d deserve every penny of the £10 even if it was going direct into their pockets, which it isn’t!

allium
You don’t have to pay for the home visit, the state pays the GP Practice for any home visit vaccinations they need to do at £10 per visit. The person who arrives to do the vaccination may be a doctor, but equally may be the Practice nurse. Whoever it is, the Practice will be paid, not the individual. At no point does the patient pay.

allium

I would have been only too pleased to pay for home visit for elderly mother to have had vaccine at home instead of having to take her to a not very local hospital, at 99 she is not very mobile.

Did the surgery refuse to do a home visit? If so, I’d be on to them and asking for a home visit for the second vaccine. The idea of paying for a home visit vaccine is not on the table at all and nor should it be.

I would have been only too pleased to pay for home visit for elderly mother to have had vaccine at home instead of having to take her to a not very local hospital, at 99 she is not very mobile.

Some people who are giving vaccinations are being paid directly. My sister in law is a health visitor who normally works part time, she has volunteered to work on her days off to give vaccinations and is paid for those days. There is a standard fee, not based on her normal pay and although I don’t know how much it is, she thinks it is very generous.

Doctors do get paid for vaccinations - flu included. It is part of the Practices overall financial payments. Has been for years. The person doing these vaccinations could be a GP, Practice Nurse, Community Nurse, Health Care Assistant etc but the money is paid to the Practices by the government. They also get paid for health checks for certain groups of illnesses. It ensures patients have regular checks. Part of a Practice Manager's role is managing the finances and checking that everything is kept up to date or they lose money. The money allows GPs to employ nurses, health care assistants and reception staff or else we would not have GP Practices any more.

MaizieD

^MaizieD if your vet only charges £30 call out fee you are extremely lucky. Ours charges £85 + VAT!^

Ah well, GG13, that's one of the benefits of living far from the centre of civilisation.

There are a few at our yard who thinks he charges according to the car you drive, might have to buy an old banger

MaizieD if your vet only charges £30 call out fee you are extremely lucky. Ours charges £85 + VAT!

Ah well, GG13, that's one of the benefits of living far from the centre of civilisation.

I don’t see a problem with that at all a tradesman would charge about £40 as a call out fee, maybe more, when there are so many places to go to get the vaccines and most (of course not all) but most have someone family, friend or neighbour who can take them or even a taxi as a one off £10 to have a doctor come to the house doesn’t see a lot to me
I think we often expect too much

Oops, sorry both.

alegrias I’m afraid I can’t take the credit for the quote about entitlement you mentioned, the credit goes to janeainsworth.

Nonetheless I find it heartening that so many posters are totally in support of the work they know their GPs are doing. Last year there were a few threads where GPs were accused of ‘hiding behind closed doors.’ Obviously the posters must have been different ones as almost everyone on here understands what the GPs are doing.

Incidentally Harris neither doctors nor nurses are being given the money, it goes to the GP practices to offset expenditure.

MaizieD if your vet only charges £30 call out fee you are extremely lucky. Ours charges £85 + VAT!

I would have gladly paid £10 for my vaccine.

Understandable GP surgeries are being careful who they see face-to-face if a Covid patient were to go into the surgery the whole place would have to close for up to 14 days.

Maizie

I agree with what has been said in praise of the work of a GP.
I had my vaccination yesterday (Saturday) at the surgery and it was very well organised indeed. There was a steady flow of patients coming through without any of the long queuing in the cold that I have seen on the television.
I get really annoyed at petty criticism of the vaccine rollout, for example, a woman on a radio phone in complained that her mother’s home visit for the jag had been cancelled for Friday and rescheduled to Sunday. A politician on the same show took this up as an example of the government failing to deliver.
Unfortunately, there is an election in May and it is in the interest of opposition parties to get us all stirred up by spouting sensationalist half truths. Voter beware!

I apologise up front that I haven't read all the posts on here but I would just say that when I was Head of District Nursing I have spats all the time with GPs who were paid to provide certain services that my DNs actually delivered but the money didn't come into my budget so I could employ more nurses.

I would have thought its all hands to the pump in the community now HVs, School Nurses, specialist nurses etc.

I wish them all well and thank them for doing a very difficult job at all times not just now.

How much would you pay a plumber on a call out? £10 is nothing in the scheme of what it costs.

That's some time ago EV. Home visits had fallen to less than 1% by 1980s; mainly due to restricted resources and growing populations. Plus their contracts no longer have the capacity to offer home visits.

I'm sure many doctors would like to do them as it give a greater insight in their patient's life style, particularly the elderly.
One technological advance is that more home consultations can be arranged now via the internet (for those who have computers).

As I saw our local news the other night, it took two people to do the home visits for vaccinations. They arrived with complete change of PPE. However, there was a limited number they could do as they could only use the Oxford vaccine. All the additional costs of travel have to be taken into account too. The doctor went as they were shielding patients so a home visit was really useful.

I'm another whose thankful for all the hard work that's being done from doctor's surgeries to hospital wards.

This is not aimed at the OP who has already responded

But maddyone's comment about entitlement is so right, I think. We're engaged in the biggest vaccine rollout any of us have ever seen, we're getting it all free at the point of use and it seems to be going pretty well.

Yet people are complaining about who should get it first. I've seen posts about how some of the vaccination stations in hubs weren't being used when the poster was there. And I'll not mention the people who think its all a shambles because their auntie's dogwalker's sister-in-law hasn't been called yet!

Harris27

It should cover their petrol. Better off giving it to the nurses that deliver the vaccine,

Really? Their time counts for nothing? This really is an absolutely ridiculous thing to say. Who else do you think should work for nothing?

I went for my vaccination yesterday afternoon (Saturday) at my GP practice, but a group of practices from around the area are carrying out the programme in the one location.
I was in awe of how well managed it was.

Are you me, janeainsworth? I did exactly the same yesterday and came away with the same feeling of awe.

Our NHS is a miracle, as it is spectacularly demonstrating with the vaccination programme. And we get it very much on the cheap. I think of that every time we have to call a vet out for the horses. Costs £30 before they've even seen the animal. And surgery visits for the small animals aren't much cheaper. £10 is nothing...

This is getting like the acrid discussions accusing teachers of sitting at home with their feet up all day, from people with only the haziest idea of what long-distance education involves.

It needs repeating again and again that GPs are working full-time already at telephone and zoom appointments and seeing those patients in person who need face-to-face attention. They are fitting in vaccinations as well, often at weekends and after their day'a work.

Plus, it is not the individual who gets the money, it is the practice, which has had to spend on the equipment as well as carrying out the project.

The bottles of vaccine are only a part of it - there are syringes and needles, wipes, hand sterilisers, gloves, and of course the phone calls taking up the receptionist's time, as well as (obviously) the petrol costs of travelling to homes.

Whoever delivers the vaccine isn't doing it for nothing as well as their full-time job.

It should cover their petrol. Better off giving it to the nurses that deliver the vaccine,

I do not think that we should fall into the trap of thinking that GPs are currently sitting around doing nothing, and that the absence of normal surgeries means they have nothing to do. They are pursuing phone consultations instead, and having to deal with a multitude of precautions for seeing patients face to face. I know our local surgery is working harder than ever.

On the issue of payment - this is how the system works - paid per patent on the books, then paid for specific tasks, which includes vaccinations of all sorts. It is a tedious system for those who have to administer it, but that is how it is.

I have no problem with a GP practice being paid £10 to administer a covid vaccination at home.

My OH was a GP and one of the items that attracted a payment (though not from the NHS, but from funeral directors) was signing cremation certificates to state that the deceased had not died in a suspicious way and it was OK to cremate the body. They dubbed it "Ash Cash" - typical medical humour - and they put it on one side as a pot for going out for a staff meal - we used to call it the "Ash Cash Meal."!!