Incentives to cut referrals a ‘shocking practice’ says cancer chief

Kumar spoke about his concerns at the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) annual conference in Glasgow on Friday. He said: “My own view is that if that is happening it is a shocking practice, it’s very bad practice and it needs to stop… If a patient is presenting with symptoms that might be cancer, we should be testing for those, doing that quickly.” Kumar continued to explain that such incentive schemes would ultimately cost the NHS more money in the long run.

The chief executive of Cancer Research UK said: “It’s much more cost-effective to do things that way, [rather] than to have late diagnoses with poorer outcomes and much more expensive treatment - we are kidding ourselves if we think that by reducing the number of suspected cancer referrals we’re going to be saving money.”

Mr Kumar reminded the audience that the Cancer Taskforce plans for improving cancer outcomes, included a major push on earlier diagnosis that the government recently backed with the promise of an extra £300 million per year for diagnostic services.

When asked if the investment was enough to ensure services would be able to cope with the increased number of referrals, Mr Kumar said he was “satisfied the will” was present in both the government and NHS England. However, he subsequently admitted he was concerned about “how quickly we can get the workforce in place”.

He said: “The Government has already announced an extra £300m a year for diagnostic testing - what we now do need to do is deliver that. I think the critical limiting factor is going to be how quickly we can get the workforce - we don’t only have a shortage of GPs, we have shortage of radiologists, radiographers and to a lesser extent pathologists.

“But without that whole team of people in enough capacity we’re not going to be able to deliver all this. For me the issue is now about how quickly we can get the workforce in place.”
According to Pulse, NHS England has been in contact with the Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) responsible for offering incentives to practices to cut cancer referrals.

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