These are three quotes from a report by the NHS Diabetes Working Group, worth bearing in mind if your test strips are withdrawn.
"There is increasing concern that health service managers and GPs are using recently published evidence to prevent even individuals who find blood glucose monitoring useful from checking their blood glucose
whenever they fell the need to."
"Some newly diagnosed individuals and others with diabetes of longer duration but not taking insulin clearly benefit from measuring their blood glucose. In those individuals who find modern technology essential to managing their diabetes, arbitrary withdrawal of treatment should not occur. It would limit patient choice and may lead to a deterioration in blood glucose control."
"Clinical experience suggests that a decision to withhold blood glucose monitoring technology from patients to whom monitoring has become an essential component of their self-management strategy might be damaging. Such a policy could risk both alienating them from their professional carers as well as leading to a deterioration in their metabolic control and a consequent increased risk of complications."
http://www.diabetes.nhs.uk/document.php?o=1023
Graham
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4 comments:
Goodness me. I have seen from various articles that a lot of health authorities are cutting test strips. This surely is a backward step.
I can appreciate money is getting tight but honestly this must be a case for one good step forward it's at least three bad steps back.
When you are newly diagnosed and experimenting to see what foods raise, what foods lower your blood sugar test strips are essential.
Sue
If you really want to control your diabetes testing is absolutely necessary. The so called health professionals/managers seem only to be concerned with saving money. Alas, this is a very short sighted view. Do they not realise that those of us who do want to tightly control our diabetes find the use of test strips a vital part of our fight. Without good control complications will only increase thus putting more financial strain on our overburdened NHS.
If your surgery does withdraw test strips please do not give them up without a fight. It is your health that they are messing with, we should shout as loudly as we can.
What Sue said.
If I needed the strips and my insurance or national health plan wouldn't pay for them, I'd seriously try to get them by my own efforts. I.e., pay for them myself.
-Steve
Hi Steve the big problem in the UK is that SMBG is positively discouraged for Type 2s by the majority of GPs, many find the high cost of buying them is prohibitive.
Graham
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