Can't get a doctor's appointment?

If so, you are not alone!

The health insurers, National Friendly, recently conducted a survey to investigate the public’s attitude towards the NHS and the service they receive from their GPs. From the findings 21% of those surveyed felt they were unable to access Doctor’s appointments within a suitable timeframe. This frequently meant that a vast proportion of those surveyed (83% in fact) admitted to researching their symptoms on the internet before even arriving at the Doctor’s surgery.

Since it is commonly believed that the10-minute allotted appointment time is not long enough and GPs are often deemed too dismissive when discussing their patient’s health concerns, it comes as no surprise to find that 28% of the survey participants felt more comfortable listening to a diagnosis from a colleague or friend than actually visiting their GP. 

With British lifestyles becoming far more hectic over recent years, the emerging theme from the research suggests that the public are looking for faster and more informative ways of answering their health queries with 35% of those questioned feeling that the internet fulfills this requirement. 

But with the public placing so much emphasis on generic internet websites or untrained friends, surely this is the time for the NHS to actively inform the public about other therapies, including homeopathy, that are readily available to them.

(National Friendly website; Stylist magazine)

This article was originally published in April 2010 in 'Homeopathy, Healthy Medicine', the free newsletter published by ARH, and available at http://www.a-r-h.org/publications.htm

NHS will continue to fund Homeopathy

It has been by the Department of Health that homeopathy will remain open for patients on the NHS. This is despite a highly controversial report published in February 2010 by the Science and Technology Committee of the House of Commons (and signed by just 3 members), arguing that funding of homeopathy on the NHS was a waste of money and should therefore be stopped.

There are over 400 GP’s within the UK who practice homeopathy and treat around 200,000 patients per year. In total, the funding for homeopathy within the NHS is annually around £4 million out of a total NHS budget of £120 billion. There are just four NHS homeopathic hospitals offering some homeopathy provision, and they are based in London, Bristol, Glasgow and Manchester.

Anne Milton, then a health minister, said of the situation 

'we believe in patients being able to make informed choices about their treatment and in a clinician being able to prescribe the treatment they feel most appropriate in particular circumstances, which includes complementary or alternative treatments such as homeopathy'.

This decision has been welcomed by homeopathic practitioners and regular users of homeopathy. The sense of importance regarding this announcement was summed up by Dr Sara Eames, the President of the Faculty of Homeopathy, who said 

'As a doctor who practices homeopathy on the NHS, I know homeopathy is an important part of our health service helping tens of thousands of patients annually, a majority of whom have not been helped sufficiently with conventional treatments. I am pleased to see the government, contrary to the recommendations of the Science and Technology’s report, agrees that homeopathy has a place in the NHS and offers choice to both patients and local purchasers of healthcare.'

www.naturalnews.com/029419_homeopathic_medicine_evidence.html

This article was first published by the ARH in the September 2010 issue of 'Homeopathy Healthy Medicine'. 

The ARH regularly publish these newsletters to provide information about homeopathy to the public that is not usually available through our mainstream media. ARH makes them available to everyone as free downloads (go towww.a-r-h.org), and they can be used for information, marketing and publicity purposes.

Your nearest homeopath?
Go to www.a-r-h.org click ‘Find a Homeopath’ and search by town, county or postcode

Health Debate (4) The Cost-Effectiveness of Big Pharma drugs

This blog was first published at the Homeopathy Safe Medicine blog

The cost of ConMed treatment is exorbitant, and always has been. Given its ineffectiveness, and also its inherent dangers, the issue of cost-effectiveness should now be considered. We have a National Health Service (NHS) that has cost us in excess of £110 billion in recent years. From its inauguration in 1947, costs have risen year-by-year - usually alongside claims that the service is 'under-funded'.

We also have a situation where the numbers of people suffering from chronic diseases, like Arthritis, Cancers of all types, Dementia, Depression, Autism, and disease linked to heart, kidneys, liver, have all increased, often exponentially. We suffer chronic disease now at epidemic levels.

If we then consider (just) the known, and admitted side-effects, adverse reactions, and disease-inducing effects (DIEs) of Big Pharma drugs, the link between increased expenditure on conventional medical (ConMed) treatment (largely drug based) and increasing costs becomes clear.

But, of course, this essential feature of the 'health debate' is rarely discussed by the mainstream Media. Nor is the performance of ConMed ever compared with other medical therapies, like homeopathy.

Why is this? And what kind of questions should the Media be asking if it had any intention of entering into "the Health Debate"? Perhaps these are just of few of them!

• Why does the Media not ask searching questions about why Big Pharma drugs are so excessively expensive?

• Why does the Media not focus on either or both side of the 'cost-effectiveness' question when it comes to ConMed drugs?

• Why does the Media not ask questions about the link between increasing NHS expenditure, especially on Big Pharma drugs, and the rising levels of chronic disease?

• Why has the NHS conducted so few comparative studies on the cost-effectiveness of ConMed, Homeopathy, and other CAM therapies?

• Why are NHS resources spent almost totally on one medical discipline, ConMed? Why does the NHS not spend more money on Homeopathy, and other CAM therapies?

• Why, despite massive annual increases in NHS spending in recent years, are ConMed health services still overstretched, and often, apparently, quite unable to cope with the demands of ill-health and disease?

When HRT (hormone replacement therapy) was found to cause breast cancer in 2002 (it was actually known to do so many, many years before that), prescriptions for the drug (once said to be a wonder drug, and entirely safe) was reduced massively. There followed, over the next few years, a major reduction in new breast cancer cases in the UK. Of course, the mainstream Media has barely mentioned this (and has since allowed the ConMed Establishment to claim that this reduction in breast cancer is part of its successful campaign against the disease). 

But it is as well to remember that this is just one ConMed drug, linked to just one cancer. There are many other Big Pharma drugs, linked to the creation of many other diseases.

What this means, of course, is that ConMed treatment is not only expensive, in its own right, but it is expensive in that it creates other diseases, and treatment is then required for the new diseases! The pharmaceutical companies have developed a marvellous business structure! Their drugs treat disease; cause more disease; and so they then profit again from treating the new, iatrogenic, diseases.

The cost of some Big Pharma drugs is quite amazing. Several years ago there was a debate about the drug Herceptin, and whether it should be available, free of charge, on the NHS. Herceptin was said at the time to cost some £30,000 per person per year, and was designed to treat women with breast cancer. Many of these women, of course, would have been those who developed breast cancer as a result of taking HRT! The mainstream Media did not point at this time, either that the campaign for Herceptin was funded by the drug manufacturer; or that the drug had been known, for some years, to cause heart problems, and death. And so it continues

For the drug companies it is a profitable business. 

For many patients it is a personal disaster.

For the NHS, and the British taxpayer, it is a spiralling, out of control, bottomless pit.

The fifth part of this series will focus on the epidemic levels of chronic disease that we are now experiencing, and why burgeoning expenditure on ConMed treatments has not been able to cope with these epidemics.

If you would like to be informed when the fifth part of this series is published, why not become a 'follower', and sign up for this blog; or subscribe to it by email - and join the Health Debate.

NHS. No Choice for Marjorie!

We are rightly proud of our health service. The principles of the 1947 NHS Act still apply, in the most part, that any citizen, when sick, will have access to health treatment - regardless of his or her ability to pay.

But is everyone getting access to the type of treatment they want?

All the main political parties now parade ‘patient choice’ as an important objective for the future of the NHS. The previous Labour government, in its White Paper, (“Our Health, Our Care, Our Say: a new direction for community services. January 2006)” confirmed this. Patricia Hewitt, Health Secretary at the time, stated this:

“(more) people (are) wanting a different approach to services, looking for real choices, more local care, taking greater control over their health, supported to remain independent wherever possible”.

The new coalition Government’s White Paper, “Equity and Excellence: liberating the NHS. July 2010” says this:

“We want the principle of "shared decision making" to become the norm: no decision about me without me. International evidence shows that involving patients in their care and treatment improves their health outcomes, boosts their satisfaction with services received, and increases not just their knowledge and understanding of their health status but also their adherence to a chosen treatment. It can also bring significant reductions in cost, as highlighted in the Wanless Report, and in evidence from various programmes to improve the management of long-term health conditions.

Yet is this anywhere near close to reality within the NHS?

Marjorie Titchen is 93 years old. She lives in Bournemouth, where she continues to run a small hotel. She says that she will retire when she is 100 years old! By this time she will have paid taxes for over 80 years, so she has certainly paid her dues, and her entitlement to health treatment should surely be unquestioned.

Yet despite this she has been fighting now for several years for treatment for her osteoarthritis. But the Bournemouth and Poole PCT has refused to consider it. Why? Because Marjorie wants to see a homeopath, and the PCT insists that they will allow her access only to conventional treatment.

Marjorie refuses to accept conventional treatment, and her arthritis is getting worse. She says she has heard too much about the ‘adverse reactions’ to drugs, and does not want to go down that route.

Even her GP supports her, and has referred her for homeopathy treatment - but still the PCT remains unmoved. She has made representations, and formal complaints; she had written to the Department of Health; she has talked to her MP; she has highlighted her case in the local media. All to no avail.

The PCT refuses to budge on its paternalistic belief that it knows best. Their primary defense appears to be that there is ‘no evidence’ that homeopathy is effective in treating osteoarthritis.

Wrong, says Marjorie! She developed osteoarthritis over 12 years ago, and was referred to homeopathic treatment by the PCT at that time. This relieved her pain, and for several years she was pain free. So as she says, she is living proof of the effectiveness of homeopathy.

Wrong, says the Alliance of Registered Homeopaths, referring to the research that has been carried out into arthritis that shows it can be effective in the treatment of the disease.

This includes research that found homeopathy provided a level of pain-relief superior to a conventional drug, used as a control. This research, carried out in 1998, also found that homeopathy produced ‘no adverse reactions’.

So what is happening here? Mrs Titchen wants to access homeopathic treatment. Her GP supports her. Her homeopath is willing to treat her, as he did, successfully, several years ago. Homeopathic treatment is not expensive, indeed, it is less expensive than the conventional treatment she is being offered.

Yet the PCT still sees fit to make the purely bureaucratic decision to deny her the treatment she is asking for.

The NHS is dominated by conventional medicine, and it has become a monopoly. The bureaucrats in charge of PCTs in most areas don’t want to consider homeopathic treatment because they don’t want us to breach their monopoly. They also don’t want to allow homeopathy to prove more effective in the treatment of diseases, such as arthritis, than the favour medicine - in which, of course, they have a personal vested interest.

Government policy on patient choice is a mess. It talks about ‘patient choice’ but what it allows to happen within the NHS runs contrary to this objective. When the Department of Health is asked to comment on this kind of situation, it says that the decision rests at the local level, with the local PCT, which has to take ‘local needs’ into consideration. No doubt this is part of their laudable policy to devolve NHS power from the centre to local areas. But devolving power from London to local PCTs it acts against patient choice, as can be seen in Marjorie Titchen’s case.

The Bournemouth and Poole PCT, and its bureacracy has decided not to offer Mrs Titchen homeopathy. It know better than Marjories, her GP, and her homeopath. Such a decision is anathema ‘patient choice’, and all patients looking for drug-free treatment are certainly not getting the medicine of their choice.

And the only person who is suffering, literally, is Marjorie............

Patient Choice in NHS Healthcare - after PCTs

Thanks to Timothy McCaw for this blog on the subject of 'patient choice'.

I may be behind the curve, as they say, but in case I am not, the following may be of interest.

This week I represented our local Rural Parish Council at a talk given by South Somerset Together to maybe 60 RPC reps to update us on the so-called Sustainable Community Strategy for South Somerset - “to lead and and improve the delivery of services…" - that will meet the social, economic, environmental, educational, health and safety needs of all the communities in S. Somerset.

Two interesting things: 

1. The plans for setting up a Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) combining Somerset and Devon, Plymouth and Torbay to bring together local businesses to jump start greater job creation, productivity, and improve infrastructure – eg broadband, road, rail, housing – across this new “mega county”. LEPs are being pushed by the Coalition Govt right across the UK I understand.

2. The changes to the administration of the NHS at local level.

Dr Harry Yoxall, Secretary of the Local Medical Committee for Somerset gave a talk 

“Working together to make us Healthier” 

in place of Dr Ian Phillips of Wincanton (whom I believe is a 'homeopathophobe' - see later)

Dr Yoxall said he was involved in something called 'Interim GP Commissioning Consultation'. He reminded us of the recent scrapping of 2 layers of NHS management – the Strategic Health Authorities and the PCTs. In their place would come the NHS Commissioning Boards.

Within each county there will be a number of Doctors “Federations”, each of which will have on it representatives from the Drs practices in part of the county. Each Federation will have a delegated budget from which NHS services will be provided for their particular patch. The Federation would be able to say, for example, in respect of some aspect of care “Is there a charity in my patch which would have the resources to be able deliver (a certain service)”.

He felt that there would be “huge opportunities for the voluntary sector”. 

Dr Yoxall was only giving a broad brush outline, and not saying anything contentious, but what was implicit was that The Commissioning Board (made up entirely by doctors?), influenced by the Drs Federations, would be the gatekeepers over what medical services were available under the NHS in the future. Given the views of the Dr for whom Dr Yoxall substituted, this could mean that homeopathy under the NHS in Somerset is going to struggle. 

The reason I say this is that Dr Iain Phillips’s son went public in May this year in the local website, 'The Wincanton Window', just before I gave a free talk on 'Homeopathy for the Family', stating 

“No, no, no, no. Please do not spend your precious money on homeopathy. It has no mainstream scientific evidence supporting it at all and it has never passed a legitimate double blind trial…….the objection to homeopathy …. is that homeopathy is complete rubbish.” 

When I responded with a lengthy putdown to Dr Phillips’s son, his father waded in with 

“Where is the statistically significant, placebo controlled, peer reviewed evidence in reputable journals?” followed by his son again, “Quite. I do wish Mr MacCaw would name even a single such piece of peer-reviewed journal evidence instead of giving a myriad of links and assertions about how effective it is. ….Shame on you for offering a first aid course which proposes using water to cure ailments. I really hope no one is taken in by this".

I prefaced my second reply with the comment ... "with advance apologies for the length of this comment... necessitated by the need to encourage the Phillips's not to make untrue assertions, and to learn to integrate their approach to medical healthcare with with those of other historically effective therapies". 

I am not giving that response here, suffice to say that it effectively silenced the yabbering of the Phillips' clan. (The exchange can be seen at http://www.wincantonwindow.co.uk/is-there-a-place-for-homeopathy-in-the-21st-century-home.htm?jn4d342919=3#jotnav4d3429193d27e30ebf41f52281208975).

It is this person, with his views, who may well become one of the new gatekeepers to the healthcare options to which the public have access under the NHS!

This all points up how important it is for complementary therapists to get to understand how the new system will work and work out how the new gatekeepers can be challenged where appropriate.

One obvious way is that complementary therapists, as patients themselves of their local GP practice, should think about getting a place on that practice’s Patients Participation Group (or keep in close communication with and brief a sympathetic contact on such a group) in order to try and ensure that local GPs do not arbitrarily veto certain elements of complementary healthcare even though their patients are requesting it. If the GPs persist in their veto, then this could be publicised in local magazines and websites, such as the one I mentioned, to bring sufficient pressure to force a change of such a practice, or at least make it the subject of public debate to the possible embarrassment of the practice. As my exchange showed, GPs sometimes don’t know what they are talking about!

If pressure from patients doesn’t work, then our associations could consider asking Government for an Ombudsman to scrutinize the Commissioning Boards’ and Federations’ (monopolising) practices.