Problem getting funding for grommets.....

[dilbertina]

Just wondering if anyone else has had problems with this....

My dd has had ongoing problems with glue ear. We saw the consultant today and he confirms she has pretty severe hearing loss and recommends grommets and adenoids removed...BUT he then said the PCT were refusing some grommet operations on cost grounds . He stressed to me that if they refused op it would be purely on cost grounds and I might need to be prepared to start taking it higher!

Now this hasn't actually happened yet and is hopefully worse case scenario ...but ffs! Has anyone else had an issue with this? and what was the outcome?

but what about adenoids?
because the additional cost of chucking in a pair of grommets for a child who is under anaesthetic having his adenoids out is basically the cost of the grommits, ie about 75p.

Bloody ridiculous. Tell her to put in for the adenoid operation and put a footnote that if, during the operation, she sees sufficient glue to warrant the insertion grommits, she will put those in too at an incremental cost of half of bugger all

I know some PCTs are refusing all non-essential surgery. A friend's little boy is being denied a hearing aid implant operation (sort of like a cochlear implant) despite a moderate-severe bilateral loss.
She has been battling this for nearly a year and hasn't got anywhere - and they can't have the surgery done privately because the surgeon who does it only works for the NHS [groan]. Evidently small children's hearing is really a bit of a luxury

Anyway - it's a total PITA - we ended up funding dd2's grommets & adenoidectomy ourselves because the waiting list was too long. IIRC it coes 1.2K - minty, the grommets were 40 quid I'll have you know!

That's probably not the news you wanted to hear, I'm sorry

Good luck taking it further - I have to say, in my experience those who pester and pester the most do get the furthest, you have to turn into a terrier until they get sick of you.

is it just a cost thing though? I know that they are much much less inclined to remove adenoids and add grommits than they used to be.

how old is your dd?

My nephew had his grommets refused on similar grounds. Shame they then had to fund him for 2 years speech and language therapy to get him speaking properly due to not being able to hear for so long.

That is terrible, I feel so for you

I am on my third pair of grommets (2 dc) and will likely have to at least one more as ds only has one left, but have never heard of this despicable practice.

I hope you get it sorted soon

Thanks to all who replied.

DD doesn't "need" the adenoids removing as such, but the consultant we are seeing likes to do them at the same time to try to prevent further problems and grommets needing doing again.

DD is nearly 4, not quite sure how the scale works but normal is 0-10 and she's worse than 60 in both ears. She does cope with it remarkably well but it is apparent a little in her speech development and she struggles with background noise and in group settings so we obviously want to sort it before she starts school.

Actually Geekgirl £1.2k isn't as bad as I feared!... so if all avenues fail we'll prob. have to go down that route.

Vole3 - that really does show how ridiculous it is, poor little boy having to struggle like that when it all could and imo opinion, should, have been avoided.

Should have said that the SALT was after my brother had paid for his son to have the op privately whe he was aged 3 or 4.
Mind you, he is going to be 15 next week so only speaks in grunts now anyway