difficulty accessing a personal wheelchair account

rayrey

We are having difficulty accessing a personal wheelchair account as announced by NHS England in April 2016.The NHS website says that they will be in place by the end of 2018 but my local Hillingdon CCG have emailed me that they don't do personal wheelchair accounts and have no plans to develop one in the future, they continue to use a monopoly supplier Opcare who in our opinion offer a very poor service
We are wondering if anyone else has had this experience and what could be done to resolve the situation.
It seems to us that if NHS England can announce a policy and a CCG can fail to implement it,shows a fundamental flaw in the NHS England organisation
Here's hoping to hear something helpful from this community
rayrey



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thespiceman

Hello @rayrey   Pleased to meet you welcome.

Thank you for joining and sharing.  Sorry to hear of your experiences and problems.

I am one of the team of community champions who guide, advise and help new members who join.

In response to your question. Have a look at our website. There will be members and members of our team will be in touch to answer.

Please take care.

@thespiceman

Antonia_Alumni

Hi @rayrey

Welcome to the community. I am sorry to hear you've been having difficulties with getting a personal wheelchair account. 
Our Occupational Therapist @Jean_OT or the members in the discussions may be able to offer some support.

Jean_OT

Hi @Rayrey

There seems to be both limited information and a patchy geographical picture of the introduction of personal budgets for wheelchairs.

As far as I'm aware during 2017/18, all CCGs were expected to publish the plans for their personal wheelchair budget offer, as part of their personal health budget local offer, usually I would expect to find such documents available on the CCG website. I have searched the Hillingdon CCG website looking for information specific to their plans for the  provision of wheelchair budgets without success https://www.hillingdonccg.nhs.uk/news-and-publications  . I suggest that you formally contact your CCG again and ask for a copy of their plan, or at least a date of when it will be available.

If they can't or won't provide you with the plan you might want to consider the possibility of making a formal complaint:  https://www.nhs.uk/using-the-nhs/about-the-nhs/how-to-complain-to-the-nhs/ escalating the matter as necessary. You might also want to raise the matter with Hillingdon Healthwatch: https://healthwatchhillingdon.org.uk/

The Patient's Association is another organisation which might be able to advise you: https://www.patients-association.org.uk/

For people wanting to do some background reading on this is the most informative, plain english, website I have found isr https://www.bathandnortheastsomersetccg.nhs.uk/documents/policies-and-governance/personal-wheelchair-budgets-frequently-asked-questions

Best Wishes

Jean