£81m-a-year toll of wasting illness

Around 15,000 people with the condition or a related muscular disease are taken into NHS hospitals every year.

The Muscular Dystrophy Campaign said many admissions could be avoided if there was better continuity of care, including in people's homes, with 7m wasted in Yorkshire.

The charity published the figures with a warning that handing control of the health budget to GPs would be a "disaster".

Health Secretary Andrew Lansley has pledged to give family doctors control of NHS funds, worth around 80bn a year, including commissioning hospital services for patients.

But today's report said many GPs were ignorant about muscle-wasting conditions and had no experience of how to treat them.

Almost 50 per cent of 650 patients surveyed did not receive a correct or prompt diagnosis and felt they suffered at the hands of their GP.

Almost a third of this group was not correctly diagnosed for more than five years, one patient waiting 68 years. A quarter do not see a specialist neuromuscular consultant and, of those who do, 10 per cent only see them every two years or less frequently.

Around 70,000 children and adults in the UK have muscular dystrophy or related conditions, which cause muscle weakness or wasting. They require complex long-term care and there is no known cure.

Today's report said millions of pounds spent on admitting people to hospital in an emergency could be saved if a fraction of it was invested in specialist care including improving access to physiotherapy, which can prevent people suffering falls.

The campaign's acting chief executive Robert Meadowcroft said: "The experiences our patients have told us of when visiting their GPs have confirmed for us how disastrous a move to GP commissioning could be.

"Neuromuscular services have been neglected for years and this could make the situation even worse."

Sufferer Judith Cross, 43, of Wakefield, has the rare muscle-wasting condition minicore myopathy.

"My doctors keep telling me there's nothing they can do to cure me, so it's pointless seeing me," she said.

"No one will refer me for physiotherapy because they say there's no point. But there has to me a point if it keeps me moving for longer.

"I've been told that my form of muscle disease is very rare, so my doctors are glad I didn't have children because whatever I've got will die with me.

"My GP tries his best but he's given so much conflicting information and he doesn't know anything about the condition."

The chairman of the British Medical Association GPs' Committee, Laurence Buckman, said the condition needed expert care from specialists.

"This is why, when GP consortia take responsibility for commissioning, specialised treatment such as this will remain in the hands of specialists and will not take place in the way the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign fears it will," he said.

A Department of Health spokeswoman said GPs would be patients' guides through the health system, adding: "GP consortia will work closely with secondary care, community partners and other health and care professionals to design joined-up services responsive to patients and the public."