Both Channel 4’s “more4news” and the NHS Confederation today contributed to the ongoing attack on homeopathy in the NHS by claiming that removing homeopathic care from the NHS would make a useful contribution to improving the NHS finances. Are they serious?
According to more4news the NHS in England spent about £3.5 million pounds a year on homeopathic care for about 22,000 patient “episodes” a year (both outpatient and inpatient care).
In 2007-2008 there were 54.3 million outpatient attendances (“episodes”) in England.
In 2005 an estimated £320 million pounds was spent by the NHS in England on management consultants.
The NHS drug bill is £7.2 BILLION.
Adverse drug effects from these prescribed drugs cost an estimated £466 million to treat in the NHS in England in 2006.
Bit of perspective guys? If you’re looking for answers to the financial problems of the NHS, you’re not going to find them in denying access to a therapy chosen by patients with long term conditions. Those patients aren’t going to go away. They’ll just need treated with something more expensive, and more likely to cause harm, than the care they’re currently receiving from their NHS homeopathic clinics.
In the real world, there are no single treatments which are guaranteed to work in every single patient with the same illness. In the NHS, as in Nature, we need diversity because, actually, we’re not all the same.
Heroes Not Zombies 
Hi Bob
I filmed Dr Roy Welford, Glastonbury GP and Consultant Homeopath at Bristol Homeopathic Hospital a few years back – you are probably fully aware of his research into cost-effective of homeopathy in primary health care.
Here’s the link and the first page of his report in the unlikely event you haven’t heard of it.
http://www.integratedhealth.org.uk/home.html
Presenting findings from the work of the
GLASTONBURY HEALTH CENTRE
COMPLEMENTARY MEDICINE SERVICE
Glastonbury, Somerset, England
Glastonbury Health Centre offers a unique integrated complementary medicine service combining NHS General Practice with five mainstream complementary therapies.
Careful evaluation, presented on this website, has shown that such an approach may improve the health and wellbeing of their patients, many of whom are chronically ill.
The cost of the service may also be offset by savings made in medication costs and referrals.
Glastonbury Complementary Medicine Service was established in 1992-3. We are a three-partner GP practice, of approx 5,000 patients. The project is supported by Somerset Trust for Integrated Health Care (Charity no. 1065943). The aims of the Trust are to support the integration of effective complementary medicine in Primary Care.
We support the integration process by:
– subsidising access to complementary medicine,
– researching the impact of integrated complementary medicine,
– establishing links and disseminating information to other providers, and
– lobbying the NHS to support integrated complementary medicine.
Why use Complementary therapy?
– 1 in 5 of us in UK do so every year
– It provides a significant level of health care (70,000 consultations/week – estimated 50,000 complementary practitioners in UK – there are 30,000 GPs)
– A survey as long ago as 1986 showed that 72% of GPs had referred patients to a complementary practitioner in the previous year (1986). Nowadays even more GPs are recommending complementary therapies to their patients.
Why implement in Primary Care?
– 30% of complementary medicine treatments are primary interventions – ie. the first port-of-call for the patient.
– Primary care and complementary medicine both manage chronic illness.
– Good primary care is ‘holistic’ and communication between conventional and complementary practitioners is important.
Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words. I offer this link for your amusement:
http://www.hpathy.com/cartoon/2009jun.asp
The funding of homeopathy issue is put in perspective here:
http://www.hpathy.com/cartoon/2009feb.asp
Since homeopathy has been attacked by Prof Ernst Edzard and the Lancet, these items may be interesting:
http://www.hpathy.com/cartoon/2008sep.asp