GPs paid extra to tell patients they are fat

Doctors will earn extra cash for telling patients they are fat –in a bid to save the NHS money. From next year GPs will receive a bonus for every clinically obese patient they advise to lose weight –on top of money for keeping a “fat list” of overweight people in their surgeries. Critics blasted the plans claiming doctors will get richer from simply telling obese patients the obvious. The plans, revealed in the Sunday Telegraph, are part of a campaign to reverse the climbing rate of obesity in Britain which experts predict could threaten to overwhelm the NHS. Doctors have seen a huge increase in the number of overweight patients requesting gastric band surgery or stomach stapling, Under a national payment scheme for all family doctors GPs will be able to boost their income if they give ‘weight management advice’. They will also receive a bonus if they offer the patient a free place on a private diet club –which the NHS will pay for. Tam Fry, of the National Obesity Forum, told the Sunday Telegraph he was horrified. He added: ‘I think it is an appalling idea that GPs need to be paid extra to do this and even worse that they can get the same reward just for telling a patient to lose weight.’ Final details of next year’s GP payment scheme will be agreed between NHS negotiators and the British Medical Association. Experts predict more than half of adults and a quarter of children will be clinically obese by 2040, which threatens to overwhelm the NHS. The number of admissions to hospitals for obesity has risen tenfold in the last decade.