Warning from doctors: Missed diagnoses surge

As reported by GP Online, The Doctors’ Association UK (DAUK) sounds an alarm on rising missed diagnoses, attributing the increase to non-doctor staff recruitment, scaling-up efforts, and persistent funding cuts in a letter to health officials

The DAUK warning came in a letter to health and social care secretary Victoria Atkins and primary care minister Andrea Leadsom.

The association ‘urgently requested’ an increase in core funding for primary care and investment in estates and IT to provide the necessary space and systems.

Patient funding increase

It urged the government to support GPs to make ‘informed local decisions for their communities avoiding a one-size fits all approach’.

The DAUK warned that the share of the NHS budget spent on primary care had fallen from 12% to 8%. It said per-patient funding stands at £164 annually, but should be around £197.

The letter, which was also sent to Labour shadow health and social care secretary Wes Streeting and shadow primary care minister Preet Gill, followed media reports highlighting safety concerns, its authors said.

The DAUK said it feared that cases of cancers being missed after multiple consultations in general practice could be the ‘beginning of a much larger problem’.

Continuity of care

The letter’s authors cited evidence that continuity of care reduces mortality rates, and hospital admissions and improves patient safety, writing: ‘If these benefits were replicated by a medication, it would be prescribed universally. Yet, the current conditions in primary care are the antithesis of this ideal.’

The letter warns that current policies have ‘prioritised broad access and seeing any available clinician’.

The DAUK added that it is happy to meet with the letters’ recipients to discuss its concerns further. The DHSC has been approached for a response.