Wednesday 3 March 2010
Homeopathy
Should the NHS fund this? Given the current lack of evidence beyond placebo effect, I think the NHS is well within its right to withdraw funding for homoepathy, until the benefits can be proven by rigorous scientific testing. That said, we should not just pick on homeopathy; millions are wasted on poorly researched, political gestures such as walk-in centres. Currently, each North Yorkshire practice is being given its cost per patient figures, and not surprisingly, the walk in centres are by far the most expensive (Reeth was 81 out of 100 (100 is the lowest cost)). There is no evidence that they reduce demand and if anything the fragmentation of care results in increasing numbers of often unnecessary hospital referrals and cost. Unfortunately, the political will is such that backing down from rolling out such schemes, even in the face of new evidence against the proposals, is not an option. Interested to see what our followers' perceptions are!
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It does seem odd that some homeopathy is funded whilst the inappropriately named NICE does not approve some clearly effective but costly medicines to often terminally ill cancer patients. Regarding walk-in centres, if the demand is there, as it seems to be, then we need to find a way of making them more cost-effective. We are lucky here with only 2 doctors who can get to know us. In large practices fragmentation is hopefully avoided by accurate & detailed record keeping shared across the practice? (this is not to say your record keeping is not detailed & accurate!!) Similarly a nationally available full patient record on-line would help address the issue of fragmentation of care in walk-in centres.
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