Patients suspected of having cancer are being sent back to their GP as hospitals try to manage demand.
When a GP urgently refers a patient with suspected cancer, the hospital must conduct investigations and begin treatment within two months.
However, it has emerged that some hospitals are struggling to meet this target, and are instead sending a patient back to their GP. This re-starts the process, giving the hospital more time and reducing the number of cases referred to them.
This practice was recently disclosed in Pulse magazine, which revealed that health officials from NHS England’s Wessex Cancer Network have written to hospitals in southern England, asking them to stop referring cancer patients back to their GP.
This is creating life-threatening delays, with some patients facing a wait of six months for a scan.
The news comes as the Public Accounts Committee highlight the “unacceptable and unexplained” postcode lottery with regards to cancer care across the country.
Margaret Hodge, committee chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, said: “There is still unacceptable and unexplained variation in performance of cancer services across the country – for example in the proportion of people diagnosed through an emergency presentation, in GP referral rates and in performance against waiting time standards.”
Delayed cancer treatment
If your cancer was delayed due to substandard medical care, and this has adversely affected your prognosis, please get in touch with us today. We will advise whether or not you have grounds to make a medical negligence claim.
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