Written Evidence Submitted by the Urology Trade Association
(CLL012)
Background
The Urology Trade Association (UTA) was established in 2007 to represent manufacturers and suppliers of urology products. The association seeks to:
promote and sustain patient choice in access to continence products;
increase patient and public awareness about continence issues; and
ensure that patients are not placed at adverse risk by ill-advised policy decisions.
Overview
The impact on BAME communities;
COVID-19 has been found to have a higher prevalence in BAME communities and these individuals have had poorer outcomes from the infection. In these cases, it would be useful to examine if some private sector providers (such as the telehealth services offered by Dispensing Appliance Contractor’s (DACs)) had a positive impact on continuity of service provision as NHS bladder and bowel services and cancer care came to a halt.
The Committee should extend its examination of the impact on patient populations to include other vulnerable groups including those living neurological conditions like spinal cord injury (SCI), multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s. Anecdotally, many with SCI in particular did not receive the post-operative/rehabilitative care and support that they should have had when they were discharged from hospital at the beginning of the pandemic. This meant many of these patients were left to cope on their own at an extremely upsetting and uncertain time. It would be useful to examine the role of third sector and voluntary organisations in helping these individuals during this period.
As many services began to look at other forms of working to care for patients, such as remote and telephone consultations, interesting developments were seen in those with digital poverty for whom access was limited and in those with sensory difficulties for whom online consultations were a challenge. National Voices and Healthwatch England have published a report on this matter.
The UK’s prior preparedness for a pandemic
The health system was unprepared for the pandemic from the perspective of DACs.
The small numbers of GP closures that occurred at the beginning of lockdown resulted in medical device manufacturers sending out appliances without prescriptions as we did not want patients to go without their essential appliances – there was no certainty at this stage that we would have been reimbursed by the NHS in England for items dispensed but it was a risk many manufacturers took. The increased use of electronic prescriptions and repeat prescriptions since has helped in the process.
In the case of PPE, manufacturers have had to procure their own supplies from other sources outside of NHS Supply Chain as we did not want to burden the NHS which was itself struggling to obtain their own stock.