Nearly a million hospital appointments are set to be freed up under new plans to make it easier and faster to get specialist treatment on the NHS . Some £80 million of NHS funds will be paid to GPs who perform more specialist referrals themselves through increased use of the ‘Advice and Guidance’ (A&G) scheme. Huge numbers of patients have to wait months for ‘second opinion’ appointments with hospital consultants - even if their conditions don’t need to be treated in hospital. Under the new