Why are GPs having to beg for appointments to get their patients treated in hospitals?

Ever wondered why it sometimes takes ages for you to have an ailment treated? Mavis is wondering. She has been waiting for weeks to have an infected scar checked, after the removal of a cancer, but was referred back to the wrong hospital much too late, even though her GP had begged for an appointment asap. And Rosemary’s GP asked for investigations into a worrying ailment last April, but her request was returned twice, with a demand for more information, but no explanation about exactly what information, confusing and enraging the poor GP.

Could these hold-ups be caused by third-party scrutiny by a clinical commissioning group (CCG)? Your GPs or consultants can’t just refer you for surgery themselves any more. They must first beg a CCG for your procedure, explaining why you, in particular, need treatment, especially if it’s some minor thing, no longer routinely NHS funded: a knee/hip replacement, hernia, varicose veins, cataracts, or a chalzion cyst on your eyelid, because after all you won’t die without treatment, even if your cyst is like a big boil, eye “out like you’ve done a couple of rounds with Mike Tyson”, as one man put it on Radio 4’s Inside Health, even if you can barely see, and it hurts. You’ll live. So the CCG (32% privately run) may say no, or send you somewhere for a “holding test”, or back to outpatients, or ask more questions, which all often costs more than the procedure would have done if they had just got on with it straight away.

This is all getting a bit scary now that my peers and I are going physically down the pan. If the CCG’s weren’t that fussed about Rosemary’s worrying mystery ailment and Mavis’ cancer, what hope for hips or eyelids? We’ll have to all limp around blindly and in horrible discomfort until we are nearly dead. And I have rather worrying pains in my hips. Should I join the replacements queue now? It is rather long already. I have a friend who has been in it for months, after years of waiting for permission to see the consultant who could tell him he ought to be on it. Is there even a queue to join any more?

Why are GPs having to beg for appointments to get their patients treated in hospitals?