So I had a gp consultation a couple of months ago about my worsening allergies. She referred me on to a clinic in Liverpool. So the practice get tick in the performance indicators for closing my case quickly.
Prompt email reply from the allergy clinic saying the have triaged (considered) my case and determined Im not seriously enough at risk to see them, sent some leaflets and closed my referral. Which means they can tick their performance indicator for great speed of the case and done under the target waiting time.
End result for me is a few leaflets and with still worsening allergies. End result for NHS is manipulated statistics to show them in a better light.
So when the nhs and government say they have reduced waiting times have this weaze in mind, they can now effectively triage cases where one possible outcome is no action, yet this counts as a referral dealt with. I think this is fairly new as triage didn’t previously to my knowledge have “no action” as possible outcome, and that this counts positively towards waiting times averages going down which is deceitful in my opinion.