NHS shuts doors to new weight-loss patients

NHS weight-loss services have closed their doors to new patients after being unable to keep up with “skyrocketing” demand from people seeking jabs.

An investigation shows one in six areas has stopped accepting referrals for specialist weight management services because they are inundated with requests.

Under recommendations from the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (Nice), injections of the weight-loss jab Wegovy, which is known as Ozempic when licensed for diabetes, can only be prescribed on the NHS if patients attend the specialist clinics.

The report by the BMJ found many of the clinics are unable to keep up with “skyrocketing demand” and are no longer taking new cases.

The research found that one in six integrated care boards (ICBs) which commission such services has stopped taking new patients.

Three years’ worth of referrals in four months

One board which stopped taking cases said it had received three years’ worth of referrals in four months.

The Government had said around 35,000 people would have access to Wegovy for weight loss after it was authorised for NHS use by Nice.

However, the numbers receiving it on the health service remain far lower, with long waits to access specialist clinics.

Patients are normally only eligible on the NHS if they have a body mass index of at least 35, plus a weight-related health condition, and have been referred to such clinics.

Since then Nice has drawn up draft guidance backing a second weight-loss jab, Mounjaro, for patients in the same category.

However, the new jab will not be restricted to those attending specialist clinics.

Both injections are also available privately, for patients who are obese, and some who are overweight with health conditions, with lower BMI thresholds than those set for the NHS.

The BMJ investigation found at least seven out of 42 ICBs across the country – covering Manchester, Bristol, Suffolk, Leicester, Essex, and much of Yorkshire – have had to close a specialist weight management service list in their area.

Nerys Astbury, associate professor of diet and obesity at the University of Oxford, described the availability of specialist weight management services as “unequal and very limited, or completely absent in some regions”.

Even where services do exist, “they are over-subscribed, waiting lists have been capped, or budgetary limitations mean services are at risk of being decommissioned,” she said.

Last month, a study found that weight-loss jabs cut the risk of heart death by a fifth, a study has found, prompting medics calling for them to be prescribed like statins.

The research – the largest ever trial of the injections –  found the jabs had an astonishing impact on heart health, with those taking the drugs for at least three years cutting their risk of heart attack, stroke or cardiac death by 20 per cent.

The findings have been hailed as the biggest breakthrough in cardiac medicine since statins in the 1990s.

However, NHS chiefs have warned that the jabs should not be used as a “quick fix for people trying to get ‘beach body ready’” after reports that young, slim girls have lied about their weight to obtain the injections, putting themselves at deadly risk.

Doctors said they were seeing increasing numbers of patients ending up in A&E suffering ill-effects, including pancreatitis, after lying to online pharmacies in order to pass eligibility checks.