A WORCESTERSHIRE GP is relieved there are no plans to pay county doctors not to send patients to hospital.

Patient groups and MPs warned that the policy – introduced in other parts of the country to cut NHS budgets – could prevent people receiving the care they need.

Worcestershire Primary Care Trust, which manages our GPs, has no plans to introduce the scheme but declined to comment to your Worcester News on why it had decided not to bring it in.

In some areas GPs are paid £1 per patient to spend time reviewing their decision on whether or not to send that patient to hospital. They are paid a further £1 for every patient they manage to avoid referring to hospital in a bid to reduce admissions.

Dr Simon Parkinson, secretary of the local medical committee, which represents doctors in the county, said GPs would probably react against any plans if they were considered in future.

He said: “Having such a direct financial link between not treating someone and your wallet is highly questionable. I don’t think GPs feel comfortable with this. We would have concerns about the message this sends to patients. It’s the wrong way of managing the problem. Clearly PCTs have a problem and emergency admissions are going up but this seems the wrong way to approach it.”

Under the scheme a typical doctor’s practice can earn up to £20,000 a year if it cuts the number of patients sent for expensive hospital treatment.

So far 80 practices in Oxfordshire have signed up to the scheme, introduced on October 1, while practices in London, Essex, Devon and Wiltshire also have incentives for reducing referrals.

Tory health spokesman Andrew Lansley branded the system “inefficient and unethical” while Dr Laurence Buckman, chairman of the British Medical Association, also criticised it.