One in five Britons would use a weight-loss drug if it was free on the NHS, according to recent polling. Yet NHS England’s phased rollout plans for just 220,000 patients over three years. With GPs gaining Mounjaro prescribing powers from June, this creates significant demand pressures for primary care.
Every Mounjaro prescription requires wraparound care and complex eligibility screening. Traditional appointment-based triage can’t handle this scale of demand. Without intervention, GP practices risk appointment slots consumed by weight-loss consultations, administrative burden from manual screening, and disruption to existing services.
Self-referral systems are showing promising results. Inhealthcare’s new service for an NHS organisation in the North East successfully managed more than 5,000 patients within weeks, without a single unnecessary appointment being booked. Our self-referral system verifies patients using NHS Spine verification, applies NICE and ICB eligibility criteria in real-time, and protects GP appointment slots for clinical decisions.
Primary care networks, GP federations and integrated care systems can implement this immediately, ensuring fair access while managing patient flow before demand peaks. Early adopters gain streamlined operations, better patient experience, and staff protection. In addition, the platform can be rapidly repurposed for cancer screening and routine health checks.
Jamie Innes, product director at Inhealthcare, said: “We’ve proven that digital self-referral can handle thousands of patient requests without overwhelming clinical teams. It’s about getting the right patients to the right care at the right time, while protecting valuable GP capacity for what matters most.”