Skip to main content

South Worcestershire, Redditch & Bromsgrove, Wyre Forest

After prompting, I received this reply:

Dear Mr Cahm

Sorry for the the delay in responding to the letters that you sent to the three Worcestershire CCGs about Freestyle Libre on 22nd March.

As you are aware National guidance published by NHS England on 7th March 2019 outlined the requirements and clinical criteria for use of Flash Glucose Monitoring (FlashGM, specifically Freestyle Libre®); this guidance has informed arrangements agreed by Worcestershire Clinical Commissioning Groups (Redditch and Bromsgrove, South Worcestershire and Wyre Forest) for the 2019/20 financial year.

The Worcestershire CCG arrangements make provision for consideration of appropriate patients at annual diabetes review. Patients who meet the referral criteria will be referred to diabetes specialist teams in hospital. This means that patients will not be able to access FlashGM sensors immediately from their general practice on 1st April 2019.

Following referral from general practice, diabetes specialist services will assess eligibility for FlashGM in accordance with national clinical criteria.  Diabetes specialist services will also be responsible for providing training, initiating use, supplying sensors and assessing eligibility for continuation. General practice will not issue any prescriptions for sensors during this initial 4 to 6 month period.

Patients who have previously self-funded use of FlashGM will be managed as outlined above.

The policies for use of FlashGM in adults and children and young people are available on the CCGs website using the following links:

http://www.southworcsccg.nhs.uk/EasySiteWeb/GatewayLink.aspx?alId=175987


We hope this clarifies the arrangements for access to Flash Glucose Monitoring  in Worcestershire.
Best wishes
Medicines Commissioning Team
NHS South Worcestershire Clinical Commissioning Group
NHS Redditch & Bromsgrove CCG and NHS Wyre Forest CCG

Update

I subsequently asked them whether they understood that this statement indicated that the sensors would be dispensed from hospitals and hence wouldn't be reimbursed.  They stated this:

We are aware of the fact that reimbursement will only be for issues via FP10 and this is how Freestyle Libre will be supplied to Worcestershire patients.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The CCG Project!

In order to find out the situation around the country for Libre prescribing now that the national policy has been published, I have made the decision to contact many of them to find out their plans.  I have arbitrarily chosen to contact all English CCGs that in December 2018 prescribed Libre via Primary Care to less than 5% of their population (and one specific request from a group member).  I had hoped this would be a small list, but there are 135 CCGs on the list.  I may have bitten off more than I can chew, but I'm committed to doing this and feeding back.  It worked before and hopefully this level of scrutiny will bring similar results. Below is a screenshot of the base document I am sending to each of the CCGs - it has some fields that are merge fields, so don't worry about the brackets and codes in the document (I found a typo, which has now been corrected too) .  The major piece of work with respect to this is finding the right person to contact....

First Post

This is my first post on a blog. Not sure whether it will be the last, but we'll see. I'm not sure I'm keen on sharing too much via a blog. I think work is out of bounds and not sure I want to share too much family stuff, but maybe I'll use it to record certain events. Most probably I will use it to record my experiences with diabetes. I was diagnosed yesterday with Type 1 (insulin dependent) diabetes. I am terrified (probably phobic, although I think it is an overused term) of needles, and know little about diabetes. Evidently my blood glucose was 37mmol/l when a normal reading is less than 10mmol/l. I guess the writing was on the wall. I have lost weight and had great thirst even though I ate lots of stuff and drank almost throughout the day. It is going to be an interesting few weeks finding out about the condition and dealing with the inevitable hardships that may follow. I even managed to eat Weetabix this morning without sugar for the first time in my life! I'...

August Libre Update - Data, data and more data!

This month's update will be dealt with in two parts, both focusing on data; the first part summarising some data about the prescribing policies across England, the second my usual update on prescriptions fulfilled across the UK. Libre Prescribing Policies and Implementation in England There didn't seem to be an easy way to compile this.  I used the Diabetes UK Map  to link to the policies and then I cross-checked this with a Google search to see whether there was any more information.  I had to do this line by line for each of the 195 CCGs in England - quite a lengthy and tedious process.  However, I am pleased with the information arising from the data. Firstly, the headline figures - how many CCGs were funding Libre, how many had denied funding and who were still undecided?  There are differences of opinion about these figures as some CCGs have not been clear (Staffordshire CCGs), and some have agreed to fund, but are yet to actually fund due to implement...