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Thursday, 20 July 2006 08:42

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Care for MS sufferers 'still not up to scratch'

A report from the Royal College of Physicians and the MS Trust says that the care that people with multiple sclerosis (MS) receive is of "low quality and inadequate quantity'.

The report says that thousands of people with the condition in England were left to face a daily struggle with disability.

It found that most of the seven recommendations made by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) three years ago had not been adopted and that services, in general, were "in a sorry state".

Professor Dame Carol Black, president of the Royal College of Physicians, said the findings suggested MS was a low priority in the NHS.

"This audit is disappointing for patients, who looked for improvements following the issue of NICE guidelines.

"It reminds us that merely setting service standards, without adequate arrangements for quality assurance, falls short of what patients are right to expect”.

Christine Jones, chief executive of the MS Trust said the disease was ignored because it was difficult to treat.

"There are some pockets of excellent practice but services for people with MS are, in the main, in a very sorry state and we can ill-afford to waste two years in putting the situation right”.

Dr Gillian Leng, of NICE, said: "At the time of the guideline's publication in November 2003 it was widely seen as representing a catalyst for change that would inform a more joined-up approach to service delivery in an area of healthcare that had not, until then, benefited from the application of a consistent and coherent national approach.

"But, as this report indicates, the NHS can do more to implement the guideline's key recommendations in order to ensure that people with MS are receiving the best possible levels of care”.

A Department of Health spokesman said it expected the NHS to take "full account" of the NICE guidelines.

"They are now included in the national standards used to measure local NHS performance and are taken in to consideration by the Healthcare Commission when they produce their annual reports on NHS bodies”.

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