GPs ‘bribed’ to NOT send patients for cancer tests

NHS pays millions for rationing hip ops, heart checks and even tumour scans

GPS are being paid millions by the NHS to ration referrals for operations, scans and even cancer tests, an investigation reveals today.

Family doctors are being offered the financial incentives in a bid to slash the number of patients they send to hospital for a variety of procedures.

The incentives mostly cover non-urgent referrals for hip and knee replacements, cataract surgery, hearing tests and abdomen scans. But two health trusts have included urgent cancer scans in their schemes, and another two covered heart tests.

Patient groups said the payments were ‘profoundly wrong’, while one MP likened them to ‘bribes’. Doctors’ leaders are also deeply opposed to the schemes, branding them an ‘offensive slur’ on GPs’ medical judgement.

Details of the payments came after figures showed the NHS endured the worst winter crisis in its history, with bed-blocking and waiting times at, or near, record highs. The service is also facing a funding crisis as it struggles to meet the demands of the ageing population and migration.

Reducing the number of patients sent to hospital is one way of cutting costs. Only last month Simon Stevens, the head of NHS England, warned patients to expect longer waits for routine operations so the health service could prioritise cancer care and A&E.

But many Clinical Commissioning Groups have independently drawn up their own cost- saving plans. The Daily Mail found that at one in eight health trusts in England, family doctors are being offered financial incentives to reduce or review their referrals.

Freedom of Information requests were made to all 209 CCGs in England, to find out whether they offer incentives to GPs for cutting referrals. Of the 182 that replied, 15 have schemes which pay doctors money directly for slashing numbers by a certain target.

Another seven offer incentives to doctors who promise to review referrals and ensure they only send patients to hospital where ‘appropriate’. This means 22 CCGs pay GPs extra cash for reducing or reviewing the numbers of patients sent to hospital.

Last year they paid out at least £5.74million – although the true amount is likely to be higher, as a third of CCGs were unable to supply figures. The majority of schemes cover less urgent procedures including hip and knee replacements, cataract surgery, hearing tests and blood tests.

But two CCGs, Cumbria and Greater Huddersfield, specifically target heart operations or scans among the procedures they want GPs to curb.

Another two, North East Lincolnshire and North Hampshire, included urgent cancer tests in their incentive schemes last year. North Hampshire has not continued the incentives for this year, while North East Lincolnshire insisted cancer referrals had risen.

Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron said: ‘So we knew that the NHS was critically underfunded but now we learn that doctors are deliberately not referring people, and denying them the treatment they need, simply to save money. It looks like a bribe.’

The money is allocated to practices on an annual basis, and it is then up to doctors and managers to decide how to spend it.

Professor Helen Stokes-Lampard, chairman of the Royal College of GPs, said: ‘GPs should always be able to act in the best interests of patients in front of them – and we must not be put in a position where we are asked to prioritise cost over the health and wellbeing of our patients. Suggesting that we should behave otherwise is not only an offensive slur on our professionalism, but undermines the high levels of trust that exist between GPs and our patients.’

An NHS England spokesman said: ‘There are big variations in the extent to which different GP practices are able to provide services for their own patients at the local surgery without having to send patients to hospital, so it is often right to support these more convenient alternatives using the funding then not needed for unnecessary hospital outpatient visits.’

‘Undermines the level of trust’

tHEREsa May deserves praise for defending the right of Christians in this country to speak out about their faith.

In her Easter message, the Prime Minister also voiced concern for the millions of Christians around the world who are persecuted and must practise their faith ‘in secret and often in fear’.

she spoke authentically, as the daughter of a Church of England vicar, and sent an optimistic message of unity and hope for the future of this country post-Brexit, which will have been well received by Christians as well as those of other faiths and none. One exception was that cynical propagandist alastair Campbell who said Mrs May had come close to claiming God would have voted Leave, when she said nothing of the sort.

It’s another falsehood to add to the long list that has poured from the poisonous mouth of this professional liar.

as for his claim that Britain is more divided than ever, isn’t it people like him – who bitterly refuse to accept the referendum result – who do more to sow division than anyone else? COMMON sense suggests that offering GPs cash incentives to ration operations and scans makes it more likely that genuinely sick people will be denied appropriate treatment. that these perverse incentives now apply to some urgent cancer scans and heart tests is deeply worrying.