Do not get sick in the U.K.

Britain has run out of other peoples' money.  Britain's National Health Service (NHS) just ordered General Practitioners to divert 25% of their intended hospital referrals, regardless of patients’ welfare:

https://archive.is/xl6Y2#selection-2977.4-2977.85

NHS rations hospital appointments to cut waiting list
GPs told to divert one in four referrals despite concerns about patients’ welfare
By Laura Donnelly, Health Editor of The Telegraph and Michael Searles, Deputy Health Editor
29 March 2026

The NHS is to ration hospital referrals as Labour scrambles to meet its pledge to cut waiting lists.

GPs have been ordered to consult on at least one in four referrals rather than sending them to hospital in order to reduce “unnecessary” appointments.

The quotas, the latest method the NHS is using to keep waiting lists down, will come into force on Wednesday.

But MPs and medics have raised concerns that setting an arbitrary target will delay patients from getting access to the healthcare they need.

Dr Luke Evans, shadow health minister and a former GP, told The Telegraph: “My biggest concern is about this single point of access, with a target to bounce back one in four referrals – that is bad for clinicians and it is really bad for patients.

“It is hard not to see this as a way of Wes Streeting simply controlling access to hospitals and massaging waiting lists.

“We don’t even know if the planned 1 in 4 patients bounced back to the GP are recorded. Is Labour planning on effectively rationing secondary care – it seems like it.”

Over the past year, family doctors have been paid £20 extra for every case where they seek “advice and guidance” (A&G) from a consultant rather than sending a patient to hospital.

But from Apr 1, the A&G scheme, which aims to “support elective recovery by reducing unnecessary referrals”, will become mandatory in the NHS.

Experts say the new rules are dangerous and will make getting on to a waiting list even harder.

Dr Ankit Kant, a GP from West Norfolk, said some requests for A&G had taken eight months to receive a response, including a case where the patient died waiting. The guidance then concluded the patient had not needed to see a specialist.

Dr Katie Bramall-Stainer, chairman of the British Medical Association’s GP committee, said the risks of the scheme were “a huge concern for every single GP I meet and speak to. It should be a huge concern for every patient too.”

She said the policy was “awful for patients” and politically driven.

GPs have raised concerns that their decisions to refer patients are being overruled by doctors without proper knowledge of the cases, resulting in delays in diagnosis.

Wessex Local Medical Committee said that GPs had highlighted risks where some hospital trusts had made A&G mandatory.

“When a GP assesses that a patient needs specialist care, that assessment can now be overridden remotely – by a clinician who has not seen the patient,” it said.

“We have seen a case in our region in which an urgent cancer referral was converted to an A&G response more than once rather than accepted as a referral, and where we believe the diagnosis that followed was delayed.”

NHS trusts have been making a concerted attempt in recent months to hit Labour’s waiting list targets.

Following the introduction of an NHS scheme last year, where hospitals are paid £33 for every person removed, millions of appointments have been taken off lists.

More than 250,000 patients were removed from NHS lists in January, nearly 15 per cent more than the month before, with Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, claiming that the figures showed things were “finally starting to move in the right direction”.

Telegraph analysis of NHS data reveals that under the scheme’s first 10 months hospitals have made £85m by removing more than 2.4 million appointments from waiting lists.

The NHS has defended the approach, stating that the measures are designed to ensure waiting lists are accurate, with people removed from them including those who have died, opted to go private, or recovered without treatment.

But in recent weeks, efforts to reduce backlogs have intensified, as health officials race towards a deadline to hit targets by the end of this month.

Waiting lists look set to fall even further next month, under the new A&G scheme.

Earlier this month, Dr Bramall-Stainer told a British Medical Journal podcast that about 80 per cent of consultations on a typical day involved patients who were deteriorating while waiting to see a specialist.

She said: “People are dying on waiting lists but we also have hundreds of thousands of letters going out to patients, with patient-initiated follow-up, saying ‘Oh are you sure you need to be on these waiting lists? Why don’t you come off them? Now of course if you want to stay on them you can click this link.

“Hang on, what if that’s sent to an elderly person, somebody visually impaired, somebody who can’t speak English as a first language? Somebody who doesn’t have great literacy. You can see why the default – we’re taking you off the waiting list – is complete political manoeuvring here.”

Meanwhile, The Telegraph has spoken to patients who are unable to join waiting lists at all.

Mike Fleming, 83, from Great Baddow, Essex, was told by his GP to book an appointment online at a nephrology clinic after a blood test in January revealed deteriorating kidney function.

He has chronic kidney disease and had open-heart surgery in 2023.

The retired chartered accountant and grandfather of five was given a list of six sites to choose from at the start of March, but each told him there were no appointments available.

When he reported to his GP a week later, he was told waiting lists were long and to wait for a call.

The NHS app now tells him that he will be contacted by the clinic at Mid and South Essex NHS Trust “if you need to be seen”.

Similarly, last week, Graeme Brierley, from Sutton Bridge, Lincs, received a message via the NHS app advising him to take action because his neurology appointment was now overdue.

On contacting his local hospital, as instructed, he was told to ignore all messages from the app, as it was not compatible with its appointments system. He was told the department would inform him when a slot was available, with an estimate this would be in 45 weeks’ time.

Another patient, who did not want to be named, received a warning letter last week saying she had five days to book a colonoscopy. She spent a day trying to call the hospital, but the phone was never answered. Despite leaving a voicemail, she received a letter this week saying her appointment had been cancelled because of her failure to respond.

Many patients have been perplexed by the use of “dummy” appointments which give them false hope that they will be seen soon, only to be repeatedly cancelled.

Some trusts use “dummy slots” – also known as placeholders – to log the patient moving through the administrative system, despite NHS advice not to do so.

Cancelled ‘due to unforeseen circumstances’

Trevor Lucey, 71, a charity trustee from Berkhamsted, Herts, said he and his wife, Nantika, 46, who runs an Airbnb business, had each received letters to cancel NHS outpatient appointments “due to unforeseen circumstances”.

In his wife’s case, she was sent six such letters regarding dermatology appointments last year, each time receiving a letter shortly after the cancellation, with confirmation of a new appointment.

He said: “When we wrote a letter of complaint to the NHS hospital trust, we received a telephone call from an NHS staff member at Watford General, saying that the real waiting time for dermatology appointments is between one and two years, but it is normal to receive up to four dummy appointments while waiting for the real appointment. The caller admitted that six cancelled appointments is too many, and said she would see what she could do.”

In the end, the condition flared up during a holiday in Thailand and was treated within two hours in Bangkok.

The use of the NHS app and websites to book appointments means far more “dummy” slots, which should be behind the scenes, are visible to patients, giving false hope that they will be seen.

NHS guidance from 2023 states: “Where ‘dummy slots’ are being used they cause confusion and frustration for patients. Providers should replace all ‘dummy slots’ with real appointment slots which align to the true outpatient waiting times for the speciality and service. This will allow patients to make an informed choice of how long they can expect to wait for their first appointment.”

Martin Lane, 83, from Lyndhurst, Hants, was recommended laser treatment for an eye condition that causes blurred vision after cataract surgery.

The condition was uncovered at an optician’s appointment last September and can be easily fixed with a five-minute laser surgery.

The former finance director said: “Just a week later, I was surprised – and very grateful – to get a letter from the NHS confirming that an appointment was scheduled for early December. However, it was cancelled by email on Nov 1.

“After a month of no news, I contacted the appointments team. I was told that I’d been given a ‘dummy appointment, for administrative purposes only’, and that it could be a year before I got a real one.”

Five months since the referral, Mr Lane is still waiting to be booked in for treatment.

NHS trusts deploy different tactics to “validate” their lists, often using third-party systems to do so, which involves sending a combination of text messages, phone calls or letters, with the goal of reducing the size of the waiting list.

National guidance says this should happen every 12 weeks, which, given the size of the backlog, means most people’s “status” will be checked at least once.

Chelsea and Westminster and Imperial College Healthcare NHS trusts say that those who fail to respond “may” be taken off waiting lists or “discharged” back to their GP, while others do not specify what will happen.

University Hospitals Birmingham said it makes repeated efforts to contact patients before striking any off.

The Department of Health and Social Care says the number of patients removed from waiting lists as a result of data cleansing has remained stable for the past three years.

An NHS spokesman said: “While the NHS delivered record numbers of appointments in 2025 and reduced the waiting list to its lowest level in three years, we have much further to go to ensure planned care is easier to access for patients.

“In addition to transforming how patients can book and manage their care through the NHS App, ‘advice and guidance’ has a major role to play in the coming years to support clinical decision-making and ensure patients are directed to the right specialist care as soon as possible.”

Do not get sick in the U.K.