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 | You and Yours - Transcript ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio 4 |
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| TX: 24.10.03 – FREE NHS DIGITAL HEARING AIDS WILL SOON BE AVAILABLE ON THE HIGH STREET |
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| PRESENTER: LIZ BARCLAY BARCLAY NHS patients will soon be able to get free NHS digital hearing aids on the high street. A new public/private partnership deal, brokered by the Royal National Institute for the Deaf and the Department of Health aims to cut waiting times for NHS patients dramatically, by using the spare capacity of private high street audiologists. Demand for digital aids has been high for the past 18 months, after the government announced that everyone eligible should have one by 2005. And it's not hard to hear why. If you went into a busy canteen at lunchtime and had an old style analogue hearing aid you'd hearing something like this. ANALOGUE HEARING AID DEMO But go into the same canteen with a digital aid and you'll get something like this. DIGITAL HEARING AID DEMO Tuna pasta bake, mushroom, ham and pepper pizza, assorted pies … BARCLAY So it's not hard to understand why the demand for digital aids is so high and growing but it has caused a severe backlog of patients waiting. Earlier this year on the programme we found that some people were waiting as long as 33 months in some parts of England and those aids are not available at all in Scotland. The new public/private partnership deal which uses private audiologists to do NHS work follows pilot schemes in Leeds, Exeter and Shropshire. Margaret Map took part in the Shropshire pilot after being told that she would have to wait a year for her digital hearing aid. She was delighted to be offered the chance to get one sooner because after losing her hearing following a stroke and developing epilepsy she found that life was becoming all but impossible to participate in. MAP Once went to a party and everybody was laughing and having a drink and conversations flowing and in the end I gave up saying pardon I can't hear you, I just sat there smiling and looking and nodding my head hoping that they'd think I knew what they were saying. BARCLAY So the prospect of waiting a year for a hearing aid must have been rather daunting. MAP It was definitely because I was waiting and desperate and then this letter came about this pilot scheme which was going to take place. The first time I came out I felt like skipping and I thought that was so easy, that was so easy because I was very, very nervous but I was put so much at ease it was wonderful. And I came away feeling really great. BARCLAY If you hadn't been on this pilot scheme would you still be waiting? MAP Yes, yes I would. BARCLAY How much sooner than you expected have you had your aid? MAP Well I would say at least six months but I mean I can't say for sure but I would say I would have still been waiting another six months. Really all this was like a miracle dropping in my lap. I could not give it any faults at all. BARCLAY Margaret Map. Philippa Palmer is from RNID, Philippa obviously Margaret is absolutely delighted with the treatment that she got there, a very satisfied customer. But is it as easy as she made it sound? PALMER As easy? In terms of what we've set up and that's the Royal National Institute for Deaf People in partnership with the Department of Health and purchasing and supplying agency is we've got a unique partnership going between two private hearing aid dispensing companies - Ultravox and Ormerod - and the NHS to actually provide locally accessible hearing aid services to patients on the NHS free of charge. Now what we've got is we've got - I'd like to say it's an umbrella contract that all trusts within England can actually buy off. So if a trust wants to participate then their audiology department will become involved and they will look at their waiting list and those at the top of the waiting list will be given the option of whether they actually want to go to a private dispenser or to go within the NHS. That means that more patients are going to come through and therefore both NHS patients and those that go into the private sector will also wait a shorter period of time. BARCLAY But you go through the normal process - you go to your doctor? PALMER You do, you go to your GP and they will refer you on to your audiology department and go through the normal routes because it needs to be managed in an appropriate way. So it's actually being organised and coordinated through the NHS. BARCLAY So then you have the choice, you can go to the high street if you'd like. What sort of hearing aids are we talking about because there are two sorts, there's in the ear and behind the ear, do the patients fitted on the high street get that choice? PALMER What the patients will get is exactly the same service as they would be getting in the NHS but they won't be paying for the service privately and they obviously don't pay within the NHS. And they will receive a hearing aid that is suitable for their hearing loss and it will be exactly the same hearing aid that patients that are going into the outpatient clinic at a NHS trust also receive, it will be a digital hearing aid and the majority of trusts within the NHS actually fit a behind the ear hearing aid rather than an in the ear hearing aid. BARCLAY So can we be absolutely sure that the companies on the high street there will fit and treat to exactly the same standards as the NHS would? PALMER There's been a very rigorous contracting process to get this in place. All of the private hearing aid dispensing companies on the list of the hearing aid council, hearing aid company register, were invited to participate and there has been a bidding process, there has been written presentations, site visits - very, very rigorous - to ensure that the quality of service that is being provided will match the quality that is being provided in the private sector and the NHS and they will be mirroring their protocols, so they will be working in exactly the same way. BARCLAY And you're hoping that this will be rolled out around about January next year yes? PALMER We're doing all the set up work at the moment. There are eight pilot sites that we worked with and got some initial results and looked at the feasibility of working it through. So we will start assessing patients in January yes. BARCLAY Well one of the companies you mentioned there - Ultravox Group - the chief executive is Geoff Murray and Geoff Murray joins us now. Mr Murray why are you getting involved, surely helping the NHS to reduce its waiting times isn't your problem? MURPHY It's Geoff Murphy, not Geoff Murray. BARCLAY Sorry Geoff Murphy. MURPHY Well if you go back to some of the history, I mean in 1989 the RNID published a document saying a case for change, merging of public and private sector, so it's been on the agenda for a while. And prior to the wonderful result from Margaret Map there we've found that typical of all the patients that went through the public/private trial. The MRC started the whole trial process with a statement - is the NHS patient safe in the hands of the private sector? And I think the results of that trial came out with a positive yes and we feel that that endorsed the private sector and how we operate. And within the contract, as Philippa says, are very strict guidelines and we will ensure that the patients are dealt with in the appropriate way and they will receive an excellent service on the high street. BARCLAY But what is in it for you, surely you could be treating private patients at the time, you're losing out your own private clients? MURPHY Well we don't believe that, because we believe we have probably about 15 per cent capacity within our organisation - we have 94 high street locations, we've opened five new branches recently in Sunderland, Exeter, Gloucester, Paignton and York and we are extending some of the testing rooms in our facilities. And I think I explained earlier to one of the researchers that by definition most of our patients are elderly and they don't really want appointments before 10 o'clock or after 4 o'clock and our branches are open on the high street six days a week 9 till 5, and we're rearranging some of our workloads to put that capacity into the contract. And we believe that the 15 per cent that we have matches the size of the current contract, so we can do it within our current opening times. The reasons behind, from a commercial point of view, is that we will have up to 20,000 patients going through our high street stores, dispensing NHS hearing aids to them and giving them the quality of service that we're contracted to do and I say most patients change their hearing aids within three to five years and 30 per cent of NHS patients buy a private hearing aid and we hope they will come back to us and buy a private hearing aid from us. BARCLAY Geoff Murphy from Ultravox thank you. And Philippa Palmer from RNID, thank you both. Back to the You and Yours homepage The ´óÏó´«Ã½ is not responsible for external websites |
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