Last month, I wrote about people in Oxfordshire waiting up to 18 years for an autism assessment. Now, people across the country are at risk of waiting for an ADHD assessment that may never happen.
Under the Right to Choose pathway, you have a legal right to choose your provider if you decide the waiting time for your ADHD assessment is too long. According to ADHD UK, this legal right is under threat. It writes that:
“NHS England is in consultation about changes that will mean the end of Right to Choose as we know it. Local NHS Areas (Integrated Care Boards, or ICBs) are being given the ability to restrict your access to use Right to Choose options. Instead of being seen as soon as your Right to Choose preferred provider can see you, your local Integrated Health Board will decide when you are seen.
“We anticipate ADHD assessment waits will jump almost immediately from months to multiple years. These changes will be fast. The consultation ends at the end of February. Implementation [is] from the 1st April and the first impacts [will be] seen almost immediately.”
Call to action
In an extraordinarily impassioned video on the ADHD UK website, CEO and founder of the organisation, Henry Sheldon, calls on people to contact their MP about the proposed changes to Right to Choose, particularly as the public are not allowed to respond to the current consultation. Sheldon says:
“We need you to write to your MP to and say, ‘What’s happening?’ because people don’t know. Your MP almost certainly doesn’t know. I’ve just spoken to senior members of the NHS – they don’t know. It’s because it’s being done by bureaucratic sleight of hand… [The] bureaucratic piece [is] the NHS Payment Scheme. They’re consulting on it now but you and me are not allowed to respond, leaving the only opportunity to go to your MP… Right to Choose is something that was put into place by not one but two acts of parliament – the 2009 Health Act and the 2018 Mental Health Act – and it is enshrined in the NHS constitution.
“The NHS Payment Scheme is aiming to put a cap in for the private Right to Choose providers. That cap will allow them to see between 25 and 40 people per area, but in many cases they are already carrying more than that because we’ve got GPs who are refusing shared care… and people, out of necessity, are choosing Right to Choose… [providers are] almost certainly carrying more than 40, and that means people will be getting dropped. So, if you are on Right to Choose now, receiving your medication, you’re at risk of being dropped. If you’re in the queue, you’re at risk of being stopped and not being seen at all. This is absolutely awful.” *
MP letters
ADHD UK have provided a template letter to MPs, which states:
“A woman with ADHD will on average die nine years younger, and a man with ADHD will on average die seven years younger, than their peers. Suicide or self-harm is six times more likely for a woman with ADHD and five times more likely for men with ADHD… We also know that people with ADHD can thrive. However, formal help is unavailable without an ADHD assessment… ADHD medication is life-changing for many and only accessible after an ADHD assessment. A GP cannot initiate ADHD medication…The consultation acknowledges it ‘will in effect reduce the choices available to that patient’ but doesn’t consult those same patients.” *
The public are being denied the right to choose about the Right to Choose pathway. As such, the proposed changes are a test case for British democracy as well as potentially a matter of life and death.
*Emphasis added by author.
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