LAUSR

for as little as two to four weeks before surgery [4]. Lifestyle modification for obesity, alcohol intake, smoking and inactivity require longer periods of time to affect outcome. Currently in England and Wales, 89.4% of patients see a specialist doctor within 18 weeks of referral [5]. Identifying the patients most likely to benefit from lifestyle interventions within this timeframe could increase the impact of the intervention, or improve patients’ health even if they do not require surgery. An effective peri-operative social prescribing programme would identify high-risk surgical patients at the point of referral for surgery, relieving the burden of assessment and intervention from anaesthetists in pre-operative assessment clinics, by accessing primary care networks in a timelier manner. A shared community/secondary pre-operative care model should help to reduce the lag between assessment and intervention, improving the outcome. Such a collaboration requires a suitable informatics infrastructure, which could be problematic, but some regions already use technology to screen surgical outpatient referrals for high-risk patients. Anaesthetists are well placed to lead, and innovate in, the delivery of new service models that could deliver considerable health and economic benefits, within which social prescribing could form an important component.