GPs warned patients will face 15-week wait for routine scans

GPs have been warned by one of the largest hospital trusts in England that their patients could face average waits of 15 weeks for routine scans.

Guy’s and St Thomas’ Foundation Trust, said that due to ‘a significant increase’ in GP and internal referrals, it is prioritising the delivery of imaging appointments and reporting for cancer and ‘other urgent patients’.

The South East London trust has written to local GPs warning that their patients will face 15-week waits for routine MRIs, ultrasound and CT scans, as first reported by HSJ.

It said GP staff should expect long waits for the reporting of routine MRI scans and that the trust is ‘exploring options for increasing capacity’, including additional weekend working.

A spokesperson from the trust told Pulse: ‘Due to a significant increase in GP and internal referrals, the Trust is prioritising the delivery of imaging appointments and reporting for cancer and other urgent patients.

‘This means that we are unfortunately experiencing some delays for routine imaging appointments and reports.

‘We continue to explore options for increasing capacity, and have already introduced additional weekend lists and purchased two new MRI scanners.’

The latest figures from NHS England show that the total number of patients waiting six weeks or more from referral for one of the 15 key diagnostic tests at the end of December 2023 was 416,900. This was 26.8% of the total number of patients waiting at the end of the month.

GPs are referring more patients than ever for suspected cancer with 2.8 million people sent for checks in 2023, according to data from NHS England.

In 2022, a major Pulse survey revealed GPs were seeing a significant increase in the number of referrals being rejected or bounced back as well as breaches of the two-week wait cancer referral times.