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I doubt it. They would not have a commissioning budget to foot the bill.

I think the problem is budgets. You cannot get a referral from a GP who is not your budget holder. It might be argued that the service being suggested would be too expensive but I would be interested to know how much money is being wasted on rehab set-ups of no value (or worse).

It is a rule for most things and people with ME/CFS will get nowhere trying to slip in with a bit of podiatry and physio. The problem is getting a service with domiciliary care, which is nearly impossible even if you see the GP!! Most of those things are let through because they are ways of...

This seems to me just meddlesome. At various times during my life I have had to give up plums, prawns, aubergines and Jerusalem artichokes, although I can now tolerate most of them, even if I get night pain after aubergines still. I don't think I was at risk of nutritional imbalance or...

It may have an effect on viral replication in one hour but that is a very long way from it having noticeable clinical effects. And in a situation of latency one would not expect much to happen at all. The situation is completely different from something like evolving shingles. I think it...

I don't see any prospect of changing the rule that the GP is the doorkeeper to all services.

I am not aware of any reliable evidence supporting any of it. I think he just likes to believe he knows the answer. It is a common thing, making up theories and believing in them. I am not sure what the motivation really is. People love to do it.

There must be a mechanism involving adrenergic nerves to the heart but calling this 'dysautonomia' doesn't help anybody in my view. Dysautonomia ought to mean some failure of the autonomic system itself. I think it much more likely that after an infection the autonomic nervous system responds to...

That section is typically wooly and without objective figures. Unfortunately, we live in an age in which building clinical and research empires on this sort of waffle takes precedence over any hard data. I was recently talking to an expert on peripheral neuropathy who confirmed that tests for...

I do not understand this. The proposal includes domiciliary visits and telehealth and includes severe and very severe services. The current DHSC proposal says nothing about domiciliary care and expressly excludes the severe and very severe. If a GPs refuse to refer or diagnose then there needs...

The ideas are presented as facts when they are peculations.

Good point. I have added something in about self-re-referral.

My impression is that members of the ForwardME group may see it like that too.

Sure, I was thinking within the week, more or less.

That would be surprising for an anti-viral effect.

I don't follow the first sentence! Nor the second really.

I have added this sentence: A central need for people with ME/CFS is validation; a separate, ringfenced, ME/CFS service is the most powerful invalidation of all.

I am minded that time is ticking by. Do forum members think that it would be appropriate to send the draft as it is (in first post) to the ForwardME working group interacting with DHSC? We discussed drawing up a service specification on the working group and I mentioned that something had been...

Even judging the merit of a <0.05 p value is an arbitrary thing, and confidence intervals assume that this is a magic cut off, which it isn't, but I find them useful as a rough guide to 'what the difference might actually be'. So if the standard quantity for a population is 1.0 units and for...

All of us, to some degree or other, have competing interests. If a group is representing a quarter of a million sick people those sick people are entitled to be in a position to judge what those competing interests might be. Competing interests are also likely to reflect the competing interests...