Charity calls on NHS to make MS care fair
This week is MS Awareness Week and the charity MS Trust says changes to NHS health care are needed in order to make MS care fair.
New research from the MS Trust surveyed over 1,800 people living with MS, found that too many patients feel they are getting a second class service.
People with progressive MS make up almost half of the UK’s 100,000 MS population.
Yet 40% of them haven’t seen an MS specialist nurse in the past year and 45% haven’t seen a neurologist.
By contrast, people with relapsing remitting MS see their specialists far more often.
Worryingly, 12% of people with progressive MS haven’t seen any kind of specialist health professional in the last year, falling a long way short of NICE’s MS Quality Standard.
However, many respondents spoke of how impressed they’d been with the care they received.
MS specialist nurses were frequently singled out for special praise but these services are facing complex challenges.
Research has shown that there are not enough MS specialist nurses in the UK and many nurses are managing unsustainable caseloads.
In turn, many people are left uncertain about the future for MS care.
Despite advances in MS treatments and the growth of MS services over the past 20 years, 60% of those surveyed felt pessimistic about the future of MS services.
Significantly, even people who reported receiving excellent care themselves frequently felt unconfident about the future.
This week is MS Awareness Week and the charity MS Trust aims to use this to increase public awareness of the condition, as well as highlight the need to make changes to NHS health care in order to make MS care fair and available for all MS patients.