This story was first published in digitalhealth.net
NHS financial pressures causing postcode rationing
An investigation by the British Medical Journal (BMJ) has discovered that NHS operations and treatments are being increasingly rationed in England, leaving patients in pain.
The analysis found that there is clear local variation in the number of exceptional funding requests that doctors in England are having to make on behalf of their patients, with the number of individual funding requests increasing by 47 per cent in the past four years.
The regional variation is expressed through Rushcliffe Clinical Commissioning Group in Nottingham receiving no individual funding requests last year, compared with Chiltern CCG in Amersham, Buckinghamshire, which processed nearly 3,800.
Doctors’ leaders told the BMJ that the increase in the requests was discriminating against patients in some parts of the country, with tighter restrictions leaving patients spending longer in pain, or even going without treatment.
There was a surprising rise in requests for hip and knee surgery, cataract removal, and carpal tunnel surgery over the past four years. For example, there were just 49 requests made for hip and knee surgery in 2013-14 , but by last year the figure had reached 899. Over the same period, the number of cataract appeals trebled to more than 1,000.
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