EXCLUSIVE: GPs who fail to spot cancer to be named and shamed as Health Secretary tells Mail on Sunday about radical new policy to crack down on doctors who miss vital diagnosis

• Jeremy Hunt vows to root out doctors who fail to send patients for tests
• Doctors found to be dismissing cancer symptoms will be identified on an NHS website
  
• Figures show one in ten cancer sufferers have to see GP at least five times before being referred to hospital
  
• Every year 80,000 people are only diagnosed with cancer at A&E due to GPs missing the signs
  

By STEPHEN ADAMS FOR THE MAIL ON SUNDAY

Published: 17:09 EST, 28 June 2014 | Updated: 19:21 EST, 28 June 2014

GPs who repeatedly fail to spot crucial signs of cancer are to be named and shamed under radical new plans being drawn up by Ministers.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has vowed to root out doctors who cost patients’ lives by failing to send them for vital hospital tests soon enough.

Family doctors found to be dismissing cancer symptoms as something less serious will be identified with a ‘red flag’ on an NHS website.

Health secretary Jeremy Hunt, who has vowed to root out doctors who cost lives by failing to send patients for vital hospital tests soon enough

Figures show that one in ten cancer sufferers have had to see their GP at least five times before being referred to hospital to be diagnosed.

Last night Mr Hunt told The Mail on Sunday: ‘We need to do much better. Cancer diagnosis levels around the country vary significantly and we must do much more to improve both the level of diagnosis and to bring those GP practices with  poor referral rates up to the standards of the best.’

Every year 80,000 people – a quarter of all new cancer cases – are only diagnosed at A&E, in part because GPs miss so many.

Luke O'Reilly, pictured with his mother Diane Howell, left, and his girlfriend Lucy Toule, right. Ms Howell visited her GP 15 times before being referred to hospital for tests

Last night families who had lost loved ones because GPs had failed to spot cancer welcomed the move.

Luke O’Reilly, whose mother Diane Howell had to see a GP 15 times before being referred for tests, said: ‘Rating family doctors on cancer is essential. My mum was made to feel she was wasting the doctors’ time when she was actually very ill.’

Under the Government’s planned reforms, surgeries will be ranked as ‘green’ for cancer on the NHS Choices website if they quickly refer patients to hospital when they are showing possible signs of cancer. But if they miss too many cancer cases – or if patients have to return numerous times before being sent for tests – they will be classed as ‘red’.

Where there is insufficient data to reach a firm conclusion, patients will be told just that.

Meanwhile, Tory insiders have revealed they are looking at a range of other NHS initiatives which include:

• Restricting temporary migrants’ access to NHS numbers, described as a ‘passport to free treatment’.

• Making it easier to strike off  dangerous doctors.

• Helping NHS ‘whistleblowers’ make complaints without fearing for their jobs.

• Keeping town A&Es open where possible.

Experts have found Britain lags behind other European countries when it comes to cancer survival rates, and that the main reason is late diagnosis.

If Britain’s cancer survival record matched the European average, at least 5,000 fewer people would die of the disease in the UK each year.

Mr Hunt said: ‘I want Britain to be among the best in Europe for cancer survival and early diagnosis plays a crucial role in achieving that.’

But the Royal College of GPs has criticised the proposed rating system as ‘crude’ and said the Government should be ‘supporting GPs, not criticising them’.

There are also fears the plan could prompt GPs to send in patients indiscriminately for cancer tests - flooding hospital specialists with overwhelmingly healthy patients.

However, mechanical engineer Mr O’Reilly, 29, said the rating system was ‘really needed’ to stop tragedies such as the death of his mother.

She died of cancer last November, just three months after being diagnosed – but wasted eight months going back and forth to her GP surgery in Newark, Nottinghamshire, complaining of severe but unexplained back pain.

More than once she was sent to a physiotherapist, who kept returning her to the GP knowing the pain was ‘not muscular’.

The delay meant her cancer spread beyond her pancreas into her liver, lungs and spleen, and by the time it was diagnosed last August it was inoperable.

Rachel Bown, who had several visits to her GP before she was eventually diagnosed with bowel cancer

Mr O’Reilly said: ‘We put our trust in doctors and when you are told there’s nothing wrong, you go away believing it. If there’s a system that shows your local doctor is not good at spotting cancer, then you might go elsewhere.’

Doctors believed mother-of-two Rachel Bown was too young for bowel cancer, even though she told them her aunt had died of it at 50.

When the marketing executive first visited her GP in High Wycombe, Bucks, and raised the possibility she was told it was ‘most unlikely’ her constant stomach pains and other symptoms were caused by cancer.

At the time she was 45. She recalled: ‘When she said it was probably irritable bowel syndrome I was hugely relieved – it was exactly what I wanted to hear. The second time they told me I could be going through the menopause.’

Twice put off, she delayed going again until she was ‘doubled-up in pain’ – when a locum GP went through a tick-box form and referred her for a colonoscopy which identified cancer. But during the year-long delay the tumour had spread.

Ms Bown, now 48 and in remission, said: ‘Doctors need to stop being complacent about cancer. Rating GPs is a massively good idea because so many cancer cases are curable if caught early.

These are not statistics: they are people’s lives. An early diagnosis can be the difference between life and death. The number of times I’ve heard stories of misdiagnosis is frightening.’

She thinks rating GPs would force them to be more methodical and make them ‘open up the discussion on cancer, rather than expecting the patient to raise the possibility’.

Nick Bason, head of policy at the charity Bowel Cancer UK, said: ‘Anything that encourages GPs to rule out cancer first, rather than last, is a good thing.’

Ali Stunt, founder of Pancreatic Cancer Action, thought ‘naming and shaming’ GPs would ‘pull up’ poor performers.  She said: ‘We know that 40 per cent of patients with pancreatic cancer have to visit their GP four times or more before being referred. A tenth have to see them ten times or more.’

Dr Richard Roope, who speaks on cancer issues for the Royal College of GPs, feared doctors might be wrongly labelled as failing on cancer if the rating system was implemented.

He said: ‘We know that we can always improve, but using crude ranking systems to measure our performance and ability to care for our patients, may not tell the whole story. The data would be complex and should be approached with caution.’

He added: ‘GPs across the UK are doing an excellent job of appropriately referring our patients that we suspect of having cancer; 75 per cent of patients found to have cancer are referred after only one or two GP consultations.

‘Family doctors are working harder than ever to try and provide the best care possible when funding for general practice is at an all-time low and we have a chronic shortage of doctors. We should be supporting GPs, not criticising them.’