Very quietly the NHS in North West London has asked GPs and other prescribers to reduce prescribing of medicines and products (under the pretext of promoting ‘self-care’) that can be purchased without a prescription. (List)
The medicines patients are now advised to obtain over the counter include: vitamin D, skin creams, nasal sprays (like Beconase and saline solution for babies), lubricant eye drops, haemorrhoid creams, constipation laxatives (like Cosmocol), the commonly used painkillers, or dispersible aspirin to keep blood thin. One GP tweeted:
Such a money saving move hits hard vulnerable, elderly, school age children* or those on benefits, who are exempted from the prescription charges but now have to buy these medicines, some of which are quite expensive. In order to save money, people try online shopping with a risk of buying cheap quality medicines.
*(the school age children are exempted if the product needs to be given at school as many schools will not administer medicines that do not have a dispensing label bearing the child’s name and the dose)
They do so seemingly to avoid bad rating by the Care Quality Commission inspection that would monitor the prescribing of these medicines.
Those in Harrow who need medical care not only suffer because of the cuts in medicine but also because of a clinician decision whether a patient meets the evidence-based thresholds for the hospital treatment as defined in the Planned Procedure with a limited Threshold (PPwT) policy and which requires funding approval from the authority running a deficit budget.
There are thirty three procedures covered under PPwT policy, including cataract surgery, grommets in children, hip replacement, correcting a deformity of the nasal septum and open MRI, for which individual funding request has to be made to the NHS Harrow Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) where the treatment falls under the ‘not normally funded’ category.
We understand Harrow CCG has declined many such requests.
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