Government Policy on Alternative Medicine – have we seen changes in our surgeries in the last two years?

The Government has been keen to introduce more alternative medicine into the NHS over the years. But does government initiative tricky down to our local surgeries? Two years has passed since this article was published, so has there been any change?
Telegraph | News: “Greater use of complementary and alternative therapies on the NHS is to be encouraged by the Government despite concern from doctors about regulation and funding.

Booklets, funded by the Department of Health and produced by Prince of Wales’s Foundation for Integrated Health, will be distributed to every GP surgery next month, describing a list of free therapies including osteopathy, acupuncture, aromatherapy and homoeopathy.

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Prince Charles, a long-term advocate of complementary and alternative medicines, was influential in persuading ministers of the benefits of such treatments. The Prime Minister is said to be particularly enthusiastic.

But doctors raised concerns yesterday about the money to pay for such treatments. They are also worried about safety and the lack of evidence on efficacy. Prof Edzard Ernst, professor of complementary medicine at the Universities of Exeter and Plymouth, said alternative medicines should ‘definitely’ be available on the NHS – provided they had been proved to be effective and safe.

But he warned: ‘The worst thing we can do in the NHS is to introduce double standards. We have evidence-based medicine. Where there is evidence we introduce a new treatment, where there is none we don’t. When there is no evidence, we throw it out.

‘We should not be using therapies that are not demonstrably safe and efficient.’

Dr Hamish Meldrum, the chairman of the GPs’ committee at the British Medical Association, said: ‘Regulation of complementary medicines is at best imperfect and doctors must always be confident about the person they are referring a patient to.’

He added: ‘There must be redress to a professional body if something goes wrong and complementary medicines have a very long way to go when it comes to regulation.

‘If you are going to encourage this then you have to be able to ensure standards.’

Dr Meldrum said money was another factor. ‘If taxpayers are expected to pay for this then they must know that they are getting value for money,’ he added.

The Department of Health confirmed that patients could now ask their GP to refer them, free of charge, to practitioners of any of the therapies.

‘We want to give people choice and people want to see these treatments available on the NHS,’ a spokesman said. ‘Where they are judged to be clinically effective, then you will be able to get them on the NHS.’

The spokesman added that paying for a course of acupuncture to treat severe headaches, for example, was cheaper than sending a patient for a brain scan.”

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