Hospital doctors ‘propping up’ GP advice and guidance scheme, survey suggests

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By Adele Waters

Hospital specialists are being forced to spend their own time advising GPs about potential referrals, with many reporting that they complete this advice work during the evenings and on weekends.

That is the key finding from a survey carried out by the Royal College of Physicians (RCP), which found almost half (47%) of physicians do not have NHS Advice and Guidance (A&G) work factored into their work contracts.

Almost two-thirds of those surveyed (67%) deliver A&G work, the snapshot survey of 452 doctors found, and most (77%) said the volume of A&G requests they receive has increased over the past year.

The RCP warned of a widening gap between the amount of A&G work that physicians were being asked to deliver and their capacity to deliver it. This expectation amounted to “an unsustainable reliance on unpaid doctor time”, the college warned.

Meanwhile a separate survey published on Monday by the magazine Pulse found a quarter of patient referrals are being rejected and returned to GPs as advice and guidance when it was not requested – raising concerns about the safety and effectiveness of the system.