This bewildering cry is still heard on occasion in the antiquated backwaters of diabetes care. If you’re dealing with such out-dated, antediluvian attitudes to providing pumps, a little bit of help is at hand. (Don’t get too excited, no one won the lottery and agreed to give everyone a free pump, but it’s a little step in the right direction. )
The diabetes big guns – JDRF, Diabetes UK and Input have got together with the NHS Technology Adoption Centre to create a guide to help dinosaurs who currently don’t provide pump therapy in their clinics yet have desperate diabetics who meet the NICE criteria and are crying out for a pump.
If your clinic already offers a pump service, but you can’t personally get one, this won’t help. But if your clinic doesn’t offer a pump service at all, this is aimed at getting them moving in the right direction.
The idea is that you can share the guide with your favourite neanderthal clinician and give them a gentle shove towards the age of enlightenment. There’s actually quite a bit of good stuff in there that clinicians and PCTs will find useful around business cases and costing models to get funding to set up a pump service, guidance on how to actually run a decent pump service etc.
As some people may understandably find it slightly difficult to dropkick their reluctant healthcare team into this brave new world, there’s even a nice little letter you can download and give to your clinician, signed by the big guns, explaining the guide and why they should be interested. A casual, “Hello Dr, I saw this and thought of you” from your side would probably suffice.
The full guide is available here.
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