Gas House lane Surgery does not provide mental capacity assessments for legal purposes.
GPs are often asked to make Mental Capacity Assessments for patients. These assessments can be requested for a variety of different reasons. As GPs it is an essential part of our role that we are able to perform capacity assessments which relate to decisions regarding medical investigations, treatment and care. However, capacity assessments relating to overall welfare, finances, property, and legal matters are often more complex and sit outside our area of expertise.
The level of risk and responsibility linked to capacity assessments can be extremely high. It is essential that those carrying out these assessments for legal purposes are highly trained and experienced in this area.
Legal capacity assessments do not fall within the NHS duties of GPs. There are other professionals who can perform mental capacity assessments including solicitors and psychiatrists.
As a surgery we do not feel we have the capacity to offer Mental Capacity Assessments for legal purposes for our patients. To do so would require significant resources being diverted from our core duties as a health care provider. It would also pose a significant legal risk to our GPs. We feel there are other professionals available with more appropriate training, legal protection and expertise who can perform these assessments.
We realize that this practice policy may cause some inconvenience to our patients but hope you can understand that our priority must be to our core NHS duties as a health care provider.
