60% of London GPs delay costly treatment

A NEW survey has found that London doctors are more likely to have denied or delayed patients treatment on cost grounds because financial pressure from government and local health trusts is forcing their hands.

In an example of how cost-cutting in the health service is putting patients in peril, a woman who was twice raped at a psychiatric hospital was denied treatment at a smaller and safer NHS unit because it would cost too much.

The survey, conducted by two medical magazines, Doctor and Hospital Doctor, found 61 per cent of London GPs and hospital doctors confessed to having patients whose treatment was delayed because of rationing of resources. Nearly 40 per cent of GP fund-holders and 30 per cent of other GPs said they had refused some kinds of treatments because they would cost too much. The national survey also found that drug-rationing is more com- mon in London hospitals than anywhere in the UK, and nearly 70 per cent of the capital's GPs admitted they had been asked by their local NHS trust not to prescribe certain drugs as well. Nearly half the GPs questioned said they had been asked not to refer patients to hospital for procedures that might prove expensive, and 85 per cent said they feared this was now causing conflict between them and their patients. The survey comes after the Government announced a record drop in the number of people on hospital waiting lists. But a spokesman for the magazines said: "The waiting lists are down because people just aren't getting to the hospitals." A Department of Health spokeswoman said an enormous amount of money had been injected into the NHS with an extra GBP 21 billion allocated over the next three years.

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