Simon Sos West

This week the NHS will undergo one of the most radical – and scandalous - changes in its history. From 1st April (the public are the fools in this), GPs will be contractually obliged to seek remote, electronic “advice and guidance” from hospital ‘clinicians’ (note, not necessarily doctors), making it even harder for patients to see a hospital specialist. Does this sound part of a plan to genuinely ‘fix’ the NHS, as Wes Streeting vowed he would do so effusively when taking up office - or more like a tactic to ration hospital care by overriding GPs in order to massage the waiting list figures? It is, of course, the latter, an extra layer of bureaucracy that at best will delay patients’ access to the specialist treatment they need, at worse sacrifice those patients on the altar of fake news about “falling” waiting lists. You don’t need me to point out the patient safety risks it potentially entails. We all know that time, in medicine, can be everything. The Royal College of GPs has been crystal clear: “The use of advice and guidance should not be mandated in any area… We have heard reports of risks of delays, with tests being required before any referral, lost messages and staff without appropriate senior clinical oversight handling requests.” The aim, says the Times, is to reduce the number of hospital outpatient appointments by 30 million annually. And the government, in a really quite breathtaking example of political spin, is presenting this as “good” for patients - as though all those people who’ve been waiting years months or even years for the first Rheumatology, Neurology or Orthopaedics appointment they so desperately need are just, you know, malingering. (I recently spoke to a patient with a new diagnosis of multiple sclerosis who’d been waiting over six months to see a neurologist for the first time – simply scandalous.) I believe this is a national health scandal from a government that apparently cares more about good spin than it does about good patient care. If you feel the same, please – please – write to your MP or the Secretary of State and tell them why. Please shout about this online, in the press, anywhere you can. Don’t let this slide. Thank you.