Failure to refer

Apart from medical emergencies, your local GP is your first point of contact. In addition to requesting appropriate investigations and diagnosing the underlying cause of your symptoms and health complaints, formulating appropriate and effective treatment plans is essential to achieving a good therapeutic outcome. Ordinarily, after a GP makes a diagnosis, a treatment plan is formulated, and treatment is initiated. An inappropriate or inadequate treatment plan is unlikely to be effective and you might find that you are not feeling better despite treatment. There are also complex medical conditions that require a GP to effectively formulate and coordinate a multidisciplinary treatment plan that involves multiple specialists of varying areas of specialty. You may not benefit from treatment, or it might take you longer to improve if your multidisciplinary treatment plan is inadequate or incomplete. 

Some GPs have additional qualifications or special interests in specific fields of medicine and those GPs may have sub-specialties in those fields of medicine. This may include the fields of dermatology, paediatrics, women’s reproductive health and antenatal care. There can be no doubt that the availability of sub-specialised GPs is beneficial to patients and the wider community. However, sometimes, a referral to a specialist for management and treatment is required and it is important that your GP recognises when a referral to a specialist for treatment is required. There might be more effective treatments available to you that a specialist might recommend compared to a GP, despite the sub-specialty and special interest that the GP may hold. There are also medical scenarios where a GP cannot provide treatment. This applies specifically to the provision of antenatal care where referral to an obstetrician may be required for management and treatment to ensure a good outcome for both mother and child. 

If you or a loved one are living with the consequences a GP’s failure to provide you with appropriate treatment, or a failure to refer you to another doctor for treatment, you may have a claim for compensation. Contact Garling and Co Lawyers for a free no-obligation discussion. We will advise you of your rights and explain to you the process of bringing a claim for compensation.

Failure to refer and other referral errors encompass various incidents, such as:

• GP’s failure to recognise the need for specialist referral, resulting in significant treatment delays.
• Administrative mishaps leading to patients getting lost in the system or referral processing errors at the GP surgery.
• Lack of follow-up after hospital treatment, where the GP’s role includes monitoring recovery and arranging further tests or treatment at the hospital.

If you have suffered harm due to a referral error, experiencing delayed treatment or diagnosis, your doctor’s potential medical negligence comes into question. To build a case, you must establish that other doctors with similar expertise would have acted differently, providing earlier referrals or handling them differently. Uncover the truth and seek the justice you deserve.