Dear Dr Murrison,
I am one of your constituents and I am writing to you in the hope that you will represent me in a very worrying issue.
NHS England is currently consulting (internally) on allowing Local Care Boards to restrict the provision of Right to Choose, which will have incredibly deleterious effects on ADHD assessment and mental health support in this country and in your constituency.
As I'm sure you know with your medical background, there is a crisis in mental health provision in the NHS at present, with specific issues in the diagnosis and treatment of ADHD. The waiting list for assessment in Wiltshire is currently over 4 years and rising, and that delay is leaving some people in crisis - statistically speaking, suicide and self-harm is 6 times more likely for someone with ADHD in the UK and NHS England has already been issued with a Prevent of Future Deaths Notice due to people dying on waitlists. Our area is even comparatively fortunate - the waiting list in Sheffield is currently a literal 2,000 years!
Right to Choose is an important safety valve, as it allows patients to opt for treatment in other areas (as some trusts are under 12 weeks!) or through private provision. It is reducing the NHS waiting lists by allowing people in need to access spare capacity, rather than enforcing a postcode lottery in which Wiltshire will lose out.
I myself was able to use Right to Choose to access a diagnosis and the medical help that I needed. It took about 12 months from my GP's referral, and I cannot overstate the impact that having the correct treatment has had on my health, my work, and my support for my family. I am, however, not yet passed back to the NHS from the private provider, so a change in Right to Choose could mean that my treatment is abruptly withdrawn. This would leave me the choice of either paying privately for medicine (which I cannot afford) or going to the bottom of a 4 year waiting list (which would almost certainly balloon as soon as the safety valve is shut off).
My daughters are 9 and 11 - I do not want to spend an important 4 years of their childhood struggling with a painful mental health condition where the treatment was available, but had since been removed because of bureaucracy. I don't want that impact on their lives, on their mental health, on my productivity and earnings at my job and my ability to provide for them and, most significantly, I don't want my mental health to revert to where it was at points before my diagnosis, where I am unable to cope entirely and risk me missing out on more than 4 years of their childhood.
I don't mean to sound melodramatic, but the stakes of this decision are intensely personal to me, and are echoed among tens of thousands of people like me across the UK.
The consultation by NHS England to decide whether to restrict Right to Choose is happening at present (finishing at the end of February) and will conclude before NHS England's ADHD Taskforce reports later this year. The current timeline would see new terms implemented at the start of April. This haste is appalling considering the dangers and effects on patients and no adequate risk assessment has been carried out. The charity ADHD UK has spoken stridently against it and warns of the probable consequences:
https://adhduk.co.uk/nhs-right-to-choose-changes
The consultation is not open to the public and, because the proposed change is to the NHS Payment Scheme policy, it will not be debated in Parliament. As such, I have no method for my voice to be heard or any recourse to appeal such a life-changing risk to my treatment.
I am therefore asking that you look into this issue and consider taking up a fight against it as my MP.
Yours sincerely,
