General Practitioners in the [b]United Kingdom[/b] who repeatedly fail to spot crucial signs of cancer are to be named and shamed under radical new plans, reports the [s]Mail on Sunday[/s]. [b]Health Secretary[/b] Jeremy Hunt has vowed to root out doctors who cost patients’ lives by failing to send them for vital hospital tests soon enough and family doctors found to be dismissing cancer symptoms as something less serious will be identified with a ‘red flag’ on a [b]National Health Service (NHS)[/b] website. Every year 80,000 people – a quarter of all new cancer cases – are only diagnosed at hospital Accident and Emergency (A&E) departments, in part because GPs miss so many. The [b]Royal College of GPs[/b] has criticised the proposed rating system as ‘crude’. There are also fears the plan could prompt GPs to send in patients indiscriminately for cancer tests – flooding hospital spec ialists with overwhelmingly healthy patients.
A slew of bad news over the [b]NHS[/b] has raised fears that the health service could again prove to be a toxic issue in the general election, due in 10 months. The NHS says A&E waiting time targets were missed for the 49th consecutive week and a record number of beds were filled last month by patients who could not be discharged, often because community or social care services were not in place. [s]The Guardian[/s] reports that Professor Chris Ham, CEO of the health think-tank, the King’s Fund raises the spectre of a major NHS disaster, if more money is not found to relieve the pressures on services.
[link url=http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2673477/EXCLUSIVE-GPs-fail-spot-cancer-named-shamed-Health-Secretary-tells-Mail-Sunday-radical-new-policy-crack-doctors-miss-vital-diagnosis.html]Full Mail on Sunday report[/link]
[link url=http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jun/28/cameron-warned-nhs-in-danger-of-collapse]Full report in The Guardian[/link]