Backwards step for NHS foot treatment
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Your support makes all the difference.Half a million people are being forced to turn to private health care because authorities are making it harder to get treatment for feet, according to the Society of Chiropodists and Podiatrists.
The society said that although demand for treatment was growing exponentially, provision of care was failing to keep up – leading to "privatisation by the back door".
The rise in demand is mainly caused by an ageing population in need of more care for minor diseases and disorders of the feet. This can make the difference between remaining mobile – and thus a smaller burden on social services– or becoming immobile as untreated problems worsen.
John Hutton, a Health minister, said he would investigate the claims urgently, but insisted that the provision of chiropody care in the National Health Service had increased by 8 per cent over the past four years.
"There is clearly a problem there, but we continue to provide services to more than two million patients a year and those figures have remained broadly static," Mr Hutton said.
He added that training courses for podiatrists and chiropodists would see a large increase in staff in those areas.
"The figures that we collect, on which my information is based, do not show that half a million people have lost their podiatry and chiropody service," he said.
But this view was challenged by Peter Graham, chairman of the society, which says that only half the 9,000 registered chiropodists and podiatrists in the UK are being used by the NHS.
He said: "At present, there's a sort of gatekeeping function operated by the health authorities, so that when someone gets referred by their GP to a hospital, the health authority assesses them again. If you keep the total amount of time that chiropodists can treat people constant, then it means that with more people demanding the service, you have to raise the bar for who does get treated."
But this meant medical problems would be ignored until they became acute – at which stage it would cost more to treat them than it would have earlier on. Many old people with foot problems were instead having to pay to go private to treat chronic foot problems, which if untreated could eventually cripple them.
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