SEPP Organization Blog

Steep reduction in referrals by GPs suggests that patients are being given limited access to specialist clinical advice and will miss out on treatments.

Professor Norman Williams described the figures as “extremely disturbing”.

Rationing by stealth is occurring across the British National Health Service (Medicare).

This is extremely concerning for surgeons across the NHS.

Stopping referrals is only storing up problems for the future – a timebomb which will end up costing the NHS and taxpayer more in the long-term.

The rise in waiting times for orthopaedic surgery is an indicator that demand for surgery is not reducing and that the issue of rationing needs to be addressed

British Medical Association (BMA) was also worried.

A spokesman said: “The NHS is under a lot of pressure to do less, for example through referral management initiatives, which seem to be on the increase.

Health authorities tightening up on referral criteria insisting those who are obese go on weight control programmes before receiving surgery

Procedures including hip and knee replacements moved to ‘low priority’ lists.

British Orthopaedic Association is concerned that authorities were actively trying to put patients off surgery to save money.

There has, however, been an immense amount of work to reduce the number of referrals

I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means.  I think the best way for doing food to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it.  In my youth I traveled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer.  And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.

Benjamin Franklin “On the Price of Corn and Management of the Poor” November 1766