NHS paying millions to block GP referrals

An inquiry by the British Medical Journal (BMJ) has found that organisations within the NHS are paying millions to private referral management centres to limit patients being referred to hospital by their GPs.

Through a freedom of information request sent to all 211 CCGs in England, the BMJ found that 39 per cent of the 184 responses said they commissioned some form of referral management scheme. Referral management centres are used by some CCGs to scrutinise patient referrals to hospitals by family doctors.

While saving money for the NHS by reducing inappropriate referrals, critics claim that use of referral management centres can risk delaying diagnosis.

The inquiry also reported that 32 per cent of the schemes are provided by private companies, 29 per cent provided in-house and 11 per cent by local NHS trusts. Of the CCGs who provided details of operating costs association with the schemes, at least £57 million has been spent since April 2013. Further to this, only 14 per cent said that the scheme had saved more money than it had cost to operate, while 12 per cent claimed that their schemes had not saved money overall.

74 per cent of CCGs failed to supply figures to show whether any money had been saved, while other CCGs said their referral scheme was designed not to save money but to improve the quality of referrals.

Speaking to the BMJ, Dr Richard Vautrey, deputy chairman of the British Medical Association’s GPs committee, said: “CCGs are leaping at these schemes without any clear evidence of benefit. They are just hopeful that it might reduce their costs.

“It is a very short-term approach to healthcare management. We need to see much more evaluation, and not just keep making the same mistakes year after year. As public bodies, there should be an expectation on every CCG to account for what it is doing.”