What the NHS Doesn't Want You to Know

By Verite Reily Collins

It's not only patients that don't get information. Recently Doctor Andrew Lawson, Consultant at the Royal Berkshire Hospital, wrote a major article in The Sunday Times describing 'The Cancer Treatment the NHS wants to keep quiet about'.

Saying he has a 'supposedly incurable cancer', he described how he went to the States to take part in clinical trials, "but the chances are that if you were a cancer patient, your NHS doctor would not even have told you such a trial existed".

Sometimes it seems the NHS is in denial when it comes to cancer, and British cancer patients are losing out. When The Lancet wrote that UK is near the bottom of European post cancer survival league tables, the Dept. Health was asked what it was doing to copy European treatment? The stark answer from an anonymous 'spokesperson' was "Nothing".

So as Lawson wrote, treatments such as he found are "out of bounds to patients in our NHS". Even though the trials are completely funded by the US Government; all Britons have to do is pay for travel and board. Several international patients have been able to take advantage of these trials for his rare cancer, Mesothelioma, but he was first from Britain.

As a Consultant in the NHS, he is puzzled. "Why shouldn't patients in the NHS be able to try such innovative trials in the US - or elsewhere", and then goes on to supply the damning answer, "it is not so much a question of cost as a willingness to embrace new ideas".

And there he has it. It is the old scenario of envy. The NHS constantly trumpets that it is the best in the world, but those with money go abroad for treatment. When our health service really was the envy of the world, it made a very tidy profit from treating patients from other countries.
Today, one of the few contracts that still exists is one with the Greek Government. High-spending patients from the Middle East go elsewhere, where treatment is better.

When Alan Johnson: (you know - the Minister of Health - the one who replaced Patricia Hewitt when her MMC scheme (known as murdering my career) ditched her and thousands of trainee doctors who couldn't get jobs) - talks about 'patient choice' this is pure fable for the patient. The choice is on the NHS's side: yes, you can choose between one bad local hospital with MRSA, and another with a newly-discovered bug - but actually top-up your treatment privately and you are treated like a naughty schoolchild and made to pay. As Lawson says, "if a doctor knows of a better treatment but it is available only in the wicked private sector outside the health service, he or she is not supposed to tell you about it, on pain of disciplinary action".

This is shocking, in a country that prides itself on Florence Nightingale, Andrew Flemming, and all the other medical heroes of our history. NHS patients have the right to expect they will receive the most up-to-date treatment available, but often patients are left frustrated and wondering why their doctor doesn't know about a new development - or dismisses it out of hand.

Once, NHS doctors would go abroad to learn from other countries. Sadly this system became open to abuse when drug companies started funding massive jamborees to exotic conference locations, but what is to stop a doctor putting in an application to a PCT for funding to go abroad and attend a suitable conference. If the potential benefit is there for patients, we are stupid not to learn. But when normally reticent Consultants talk about their blood boiling, this thrown up worrying signs that our medical advisers are rebelling, even though they are on contracts with the NHS and have to mind what they say in case a vindictive politically-minded administrator takes them to task and damages their careeer prospects.

Trying to save money, the NHS is cutting down in vital aspects of training, whilst putting in yet more 'inniatives' which only fuel the already top-heavy Administrative layer. To try and keep the public mis-informed, NHS spin-doctors produce the old chestnut about patients abroad having to pay for treatment. In my past three years writing about health, I haven't been able to find anyone, even those paying supposedly high US insurance charges, who complains about the amount they have to pay a year in comparison with what we pay in taxes. MY NHS doctor was rivetted during my last appointment when I explained the true picture behind the statistics: French people pay a combination of taxes and private insurance for their health service. The total, for a far, far better service, comes to less than the £1,500 - £1,700 we pay per person for our state-funded system that is creaking at its joints.

Talking to a nurse in Chelsea and Westminster Hospital yesterday, she has worked in both systems, and said "I can't wait until we adopt the French system" and we agreed this would cut overheads drastically. When insurance companies pay part of the bill - they soon cut down on 'chill out executive rooms' and other frills. So if you want to top up your treatment, or even go abroad, don't allow bullying NHS staff to put you off. When I needed treatment, and local PCT put every obstacle in my way to obstruct this, I got my MEP, John Bowis, on the case. Result was they caved in. Bullies don't like being challenged. And as brave Lawson says "I don't think the
NHS will penalise me, although I would love to see it try".

http://after-cancer.com Verite Reily Collins is a cancer patient, and championing causes to improve our treatment in UK. For information about Clinical Trials, see http://www.after-cancer.com

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