Thousands of lives may be lost to cancer because 250,000 patients were not referred to hospital for urgent checks, says a report to be published this week.
Family doctors made 339,242 urgent cancer referrals in England between April and June, down from 594,060 in the same period last year — a drop of 43%.
The fall in the number of people seeing their GP with symptoms, and in referrals for scans, is resulting in cancers being spotted too late, according to the research by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) and Carnall Farrar, a healthcare management consultancy.
The result is that Britain could reverse a decade of progress in tackling the disease with survival rates predicted to slump, the study found. Cancer charities said