Currently, people suffering from symptoms such as cough, fatigue and dizziness face long waits for tests or to see hospital doctors, which in turn delays their first treatment. The guidance, which has been in place since 2012, is promoted by the NHS so that GPs and family doctors can use their clinical judgment and help people skip the need to see a specialist first. According to NHS England, waiting times could be reduced by up to four weeks when a doctor orders these tests directly. Hundreds of thousands of hospital appointments could then be freed up. The 2012 guidance, Immediate access to diagnostic tests for cancer, said chest X-rays, ultrasound, flexible sigmoidoscopy and brain MRI were “priority areas” to which doctors should have free access. Now NHS England is trying to standardize the approach so that areas that may not have access to all the tests can get them. A survey by GP Online in 2014 found that local health leaders were preventing GPs from ordering the scans directly. It found that many clinical commissioning groups recommended that doctors divert patients through specialist services, with one in 10 refusing doctors direct access to scans. Image: A patient undergoes a CT scan at the Royal Papworth Hospital, Cambridge in 2021. Picture: PA NHS chief executive Amanda Pritchard will tell the NHS Providers conference in Liverpool: “General practitioners are already referring record numbers of patients for urgent cancer referrals, so much so that the shortage of people coming in for cancer checks caused by the pandemic has now eliminated. “This new initiative builds on this progress by supporting GPs to provide more testing opportunities across the country for people who have unclear symptoms. “By sending patients directly for tests, we can catch and treat more cancers at an earlier stage, helping us to meet our long-term NHS plan ambitions to diagnose three-quarters of cancers at stages one or two, when it is easier to be dealt with. “ In 2018, the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust showed that patients with suspected lung cancer who had immediate access to CT scans waited an average of 29 days instead of 66 between referral and treatment. Image: Referring patients directly for scans could help reduce waiting times Dr Katharine Halliday, president of the Royal College of Radiologists, said: “For a cancer patient, every day counts. Faster diagnosis means less invasive treatments, better recovery and better outcomes.” Louise Ansari, national director of Healthwatch England, added: “This new initiative will give every GP practice in the country much more flexibility in terms of the tests and scans they can order for their patients. Ultimately, we hope that this it will help diagnose people who have cancer as early as possible, leading to better quality care and better long-term survival rates.” GPs will be able to have immediate access to a wider range of tests used to diagnose non-cancer conditions from 2023 to 2024.
