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A RIGHT TO REFER: OUR CAMPAIGN
What we have found
An increasing proportion of GP referrals are being screened by referral management centres, with some areas seeing a raft of complaints from patients and serious untoward incidents. Other GPs are facing a ban on locum referrals, or being limited to as few as four referrals a week.
What we are campaigning for
1. Every referral management centre must be put to a ballot of GP practices at the clinical commissioning group, and should only continue if it has a mandate to do so.
2. The Department of Health or NHS Commissioning Board should make funding available for GP peer review of referrals, as a cost-effective, evidence-based alternative to referral management centres.
3. The secretary of state must provide a written guarantee that GPs have the ultimate right to refer a patient whenever they believe it is unequivocally in that patient¹s best interests.
4. The DH must launch an investigation into the serious incidents and patient complaints that have arisen at some referral management centres.
How you can join our campaign
1. Submit examples of how your referrals have been blocked, to be featured in Pulse, using the form below or emailing: feedback@pulsetoday.co.uk.
2. Tell us if you want us to highlight your cases to your local press to pile on the pressure for local change.
3. Sign our online petition to the DH backing our campaign.
 Dr Diana Smallwood wonders, if you’re going to tell locums they can’t refer, what’s the point of using them at all? |
 Our campaign aims to champion approaches that draw on the expertise and experience of GPs – and expose those imposed on them. |
 GPs are breaching patient confidentiality by routinely including ‘inappropriate’ information in computer-generated referral letters, LMC leaders have warned. |
GPs have triggered an internal inquiry at a children’s hospital after it refused to accept emergency referrals for two seriously ill children, forcing their GPs to phone around for alternatives. |
Exclusive GP commissioners have ditched a controversial plan to ban referrals by GP locums in a bid to drive down practice referral rates. |
 Exclusive LMC leaders have been sidelined in negotiations over safeguards to controversial rationing policies to ensure GPs are able to refer to secondary care ‘when appropriate’. |
Exclusive Confidentiality is being compromised by overbearing referral management procedures with some patients ‘easily identifiable’ from their records, say GP leaders. |
 Exclusive NHS managers are blocking GP referrals that are not made on time-consuming pro forma, in a move GPs warn is driving up workload and risking patient safety. |
Some patients are taking the drastic step of performing plastic surgery on themselves because they cannot get a referral to a specialist on the NHS, a new report warns. |
A senior hospital consultant in an area spearheading GP commissioning has resigned from his position representing secondary care doctors and claimed restrictions on GP referrals and caps on activity were putting patient safety at risk. |
Exclusive Patients are increasingly being driven to pay for private healthcare because of tough restrictions being placed on GP referrals and cuts in the availability of some procedures on the NHS. |
 A hospital in Berkshire has stopped returning patients with suspected cancer to their GPs if they were unable to make their first appointment after two-week referral, after apparently reacting following an article in Pulse. |
Exclusive A referral management centre has been controversially screening GP referrals for transient ischaemic attack or stroke, and for ‘breast symptoms’, in moves experts warned could dangerously delay assessment of patients in hospital. |
 Exclusive A referral management centre has attracted more than 100 complaints from GPs and patients angered after referrals were diverted to privately run secondary care services situated up to 30 miles out of town, a Pulse investigation reveals. |
 LMC leaders across London are pushing PCTs to sign up to a set of principles designed to preserve GPs’ referral freedom, as national medical organisations throw their weight behind Pulse’s A right to refer campaign. |
Exclusive A series of ‘serious untoward incidents’ involving triage of GP referrals at referral management centres have been placed under investigation, Pulse can reveal. |
 GPs have been handed a huge cash boost by their CCG to help them cut their referrals by peer education and support without the need for draconian referral management. |
 Exclusive GP commissioners are set to impose a ‘referral ban’ on locums in a bid to drive down hospital referral rates, under controversial plans tabled by a clinical commissioning group. |
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