Wait time for 'urgent' NHS referral

[twodoorsup]

Posting here for traffic.

What has been your experience with wait time for an 'urgent' referral to a specialist by your GP? I have been told by my GP a few months which doesn't seem urgent & given symptoms feel it should be a bit faster (it's gyne related FYI) but I am well aware of the backlog etc. So just wanting to know what other's wait times have been like? Thanks

God he’s only 32, that’s shocking. I hope you get an appointment soon. You’d think his age would make him a priority (I think it should)

Both DM and DH had urgent heart issues and even fifteen years ago the wait was six months plus.

I think its very dependant on where you live.

I was recently referred on the 2 week pathway to check a lump in my breast (all fine), but my mum who was actually diagnosed with breast cancer had to wait 3 months to have it removed last year.

We spend less per head on healthcare as a country than other countries. Funny that we spend the least and have such a shit service.? Maybe if we paid staff better there would be more staff and less waiting time. Oh and less industrial action.

e UK spent less on health than its peers in Europe, as seen in figure 1 below. Between 2010 and 2019, average day-to-day spending in the UK was £3,005 per person, 18 per cent below the EU-14 average of £3,655. This is despite following similar trends in demographic change to comparable EU countries.

But I do agree that the issues you mentioned are also causing problems though a lot of those would be solved by better funding 🤷‍♀️

It’s with the hospital. He can’t get it done at the GPs.

Last year I had an urgent referral to rheumatology and was seen within 5 days. That was probably exceptional though.

Like the pp says, here it’s not even the doctor that takes blood samples or a nurse, it’s the healthcare assistants. It’s shocking your son has to wait so long and why it has to be done in the hospital?!

Mine is "urgent" but not 2WW - I need an operation for stage 4 endo as my pain is unmanageable and it's affected my bladder and bowel

A year for first consult, currently waiting on MRI, then another consult, MDT meeting, medical menopause for 3 months and then I finally get to have the operation

Was told 4 weeks for MRI, it's been 5 and nothing yet

My GP surgery refuses to do blood tests that the hospital has requested. To the extent when I was having treatment in London which was a 2hr, £100 train fare I had to go to London every 3 months for a blood test because the GP
practice wouldn’t do it. Because of funding.

I actually stopped my treatment because i couldn’t keep taking the time off work to go to London.

Entirely varies depending on the hospital. If you have choices of more than one you can get to, it's worth calling each hospital and finding out their gynae wait. Urgent often doesn't really mean anything if it's on the suspected cancer pathway.

Mine is urgent but not 2 WW like a PP… I have been waiting on my urgent gynae referral for 10 months and have the appointment cancelled twice.

apparently our hospitals waiting list is about 17 months unless it’s immediately life threatening (in gynae)

Urgent referral to dermatology was two days.

Hi there

I hope you get your treatment very soon It's not good waiting for treatment as things just get worse
I'm a RA sufferer and last year was waiting a while to just see my consultant to go forward with my infusions then had to wait 7 weeks for the hospital day care appointment to administer it . Was told big backlog .
Terrible time and i wrote Christmas off
Never had to wait that long before
Hope you go on ok and things start to feel much easier for you .

Because of various safety and medicolegal issues. It's up to the hospital in London to arrange for your local hospital to accept their forms - which they could easily do, they just can't be bothered so they dump this unresourced work on the GP. With the pressures in primary care, we just don't have the time to do this any more (plus massively increases the risk of abnormalities falling through the cracks) so more and more GPs are refusing. Patients need to be aware of this if they choose a distant hospital.

Surely it also depends on where they are going to be sent to be processed? My GP can’t do bloods ordered by the hospital I attend, and vice versa, because they actually get processed at different labs and they use different types of bottles!

My urgent for bone cancer took 9 weeks and when I got there the Doctor said I'd been referred to the wrong team as he only does spines and mine isn't in my spine. From first symptom to now it has been 2.5 years with bring fobbed off with physio etc until I insisted on an MRI. This showed a 2cm tumour but noone can tell me if it's benign or not because I've not actually seen the right doctor. I'm on the verge of giving up because I have no fight left. I'm on morphine as the pain is so bad. My dad died of bone cancer at 32, so I feel I may as well just give in to it aswell.

Where is this? I am shocked by this. I lived in a heavily populated area and have been on the cancer two week pathway twice recently. Both times I was seen within a week.

I mean urgent cardio waits in my area are 6 months plus. So men are dying too if that makes you feel better.

That comment was in response to gyne waiting times.

I had an "urgent" referral from my optician to see a consultant for suspected glaucoma, it took 15 months.

Not long ago I worked for a private healthcare company and I'd say about 25% of the enquiries I dealt with were people in agony, or too ill to function, or completely bed bound, sat on NHS waiting lists for months or in some cases years. They were willing to put themselves in tens of thousands of pounds of medical debt self funding themselves through their procedures to get them done faster privately. It was heart breaking.

"Yes Mrs Jones I'm so glad your operation went well and you're back on your feet, you'll now be able to use your newfound mobility to work until you're 85 to pay off the £45k you now owe us.".

And I talked about cardiology waiting times in an earlier post if that makes you feel better. My friend who’s been waiting over a year for surgery and told he could die any minute is male. In my other post I was specifically talking about gynaecology so of course I said women. Let’s not twist what I was talking about thanks.

@Suncream123 sadly there was no choice involved in my place of treatment, it’s the only hospital in the U.K. which treats my condition.

God this is awful.

The system is actually broken

Then insist that your consultant's team talks to your local hospital about getting your bloods done there. It can be done, hospital admin just generally can't be bothered unless you push.