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Health

Thousands of NHS GP referrals silently dropped from hospital waiting lists, watchdog finds

The Health Services Safety Investigations Body found the NHS e-Referral Service automatically removes referrals from hospital worklists after 180 days with no warning, with more than 120,000 removals this year possibly never reviewed.

By James Calloway · · 1 min read

Exterior of Watford General Hospital, an NHS hospital in England (file photo).
Photo: Bryn Holmes, geograph.org.uk (CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Thousands of NHS patients’ GP referrals have been silently removed from hospital waiting lists without warning, an investigation by the Health Services Safety Investigations Body (HSSIB) published on 22 October has found.

The watchdog found the NHS e-Referral Service (e-RS) removes referrals from hospital worklists after 180 days with no action, and staff are not alerted when entries “drop off”, Pulse Today reported. Around 1,000 referrals were removed without warning, spotted after GPs raised concerns.

The HSSIB said the system “was not designed to manage the current volume of referrals”, worsened by post-pandemic pressure, and described the flaw as an “immediate patient safety risk”, according to iBTimes. Incidents date back to 2018: 72 referrals vanished that year, more than 1,000 patients potentially dropped off in 2019, and about 1,000 referrals were restored in 2023-24 because clinics lacked capacity.

Between February and July 2026, more than 120,000 entries were removed from e-RS worklists with no record they had been reviewed, Pulse Today reported. The HSSIB said no harm was reported in the incidents it identified, but warned harm may be under-recognised.

NHS England told GPonline: “All patients in this report were offered appointments, but no one should ever wait 180 days for their referral to be processed in any circumstance.”

Sources:

More on this topic: all Health stories

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