Can you get Osteopathy on the NHS?

Yes.........But it depends upon where you live, some Hospital trusts have contracted with osteopaths for years and PCTs also. Now Gp's are being put incontrol of financing things may change but that will be largely down to the views of your local GP practice and they will want control of any physical therapy that they are paying for. As a mutual patient of osteopathy and the GP, all you can do is relay your experience of osteopathy to your GP and ask them why it is they do not offer osteopathy as part of their service to patient care?

The reasons for this depend upon the make up of each areas GP practice or Hospital trust and the views held by the resident GP's consultants and medics.

Money is always an issue and they believe the money needs to be spent else where. If you compare the cost of treatment paid by the individual to the osteopath and the cost to the taxpayer for a GP appointment and then a physio referral the osteopathic treatment is about half of that paid by the taxpayer for the alternative! In fact from your fee to the osteopath we have to deduct national Insurance income tax and corporation tax from that also so in fact you indirectly contribut e to the tax revenue by using a private osteopath which then goes to subsidise the NHS!

Evidence of efficacy used to be a reason bandied about but since the BEAM Report of 2004 and NICE's thorough endorsement(2009) of the research as good quality evidence that is not a viable excuse any more. There are plenty of medical treatments with questionable efficacy for the long term, still being offered to patients on a regular basis particularly in the aea of palliative symptom relief treatments. Steroids methotrexate, medication for mental health, etc etc. Let us not even start to look at iatrogenic pharmaceutical dependancy, the answer no matter how unsatifactory these treatments are; they are the best they have to offer at present, which is the truth.

I would argue that Osteopaths can save the NHS lots of money by offering treatment advice to patients at that critical time when good conservative measures and treatments given by an effective osteopath can be the catalyst to changing patients out comes dramatically and decreasing the burden on the NHs drug and anesthetic bill for the long term. Also needless and broad testing and imaging could be reduced to what is essential.

I also need to point out that working within the loviathan that is the NHS(3rd largest employer behind the RED ARMY and the INDIAN RAILWAY) does not thrill osteopaths we value are autonomy and our capacity to keep our practice broad and varied with a strong musculoskeletal and biomechanical flavour to it. We are holistic and interested in our patients, they are the life blood of our practice and we realise we can do nothing in 10 mins even 20 mins sometimes we need an hour to properly consider a patient's issues and this unfortunately would be difficult to accomodate in the business like processes of the NHS.