Hearing and Balance UK. Minutes of the HAB UK Meeting. 26 th February Board Room, Royal National Throat Nose and Ear Hospital

Transcription

1 Hearing and Balance UK Minutes of the HAB UK Meeting 26 th February 2014 Board Room, Royal National Throat Nose and Ear Hospital Present: Charlotte Agrup (BAAP) Lorraine Gailey (Hearing Link) Adam Beckman (BAA) Mel Ferguson (NHBRU) David Couch (BATOD) Alan Torbet (BSHAA) Gary Webster (BAEA) Adrian Davies Susan Paris (BSA Note taking) Apologies: Chris Wood (Hearing Loss) Gerard Odonoghue (ENTUK) Vicki Kirwin (NDCS) Abby Davies (PHE) Will Brassington (BAA) Huw Cooper (BSA) Alison Walsh Gill Painter (BAPA) Agenda Item Notes Action 1. Welcome and Apologies 2. Minutes and Actions from previous meeting 3. Matters arising from the Minutes not itemised below The minutes of the previous meeting were accepted with one change. It was noted that under AOB not should have read now. Adam Beckman reported that there was an Alliance meeting due to take place in April, however he also reported that he felt that it was not making much progress as it was not being taken seriously by those in power. The Alliance group had been formed to bring people in the industry and practice of audiology so that they could be bring their concerns and ideas to parliament on a particular topic, however the topic did heavily dictate the attendance of those there. Discussions about the committee s concerns had been held with Lillian Greenwood MP who had said that she would look into them. Normal Lamb Minster for Health had stated that his department had been working on the issue of hearing loss. Chris Higgins believed that there was a case to be made that there was no ownership being taken by anyone over this matter, all slaves with no master as although Hearing loss had a wide impact on the health of the nation, it was unseen damage and was considered a low priority Adrian Davies said that he was not involved in the policy and delivery but SEP 1

2 4. Diagnosis and intervention in children with APD - update 5. Hearing Loss Strategy (England) update he was aware that NHS England and Health Education England were involved to varying degrees in the provision of training and hearing aid equipment. It was however looking like the government was going for a global hearing solution rather than tailoring treatment. With that said, Health Education England were looking to the formation of local healthcare teams, being centres of excellence in audiology throughout the country. There were concerns about the long term evaluations being done as globally these were not robust. There appeared to be an information vacuum with regards to the statistics for AQP uptakes, it was believed to be around 100,000 people had taken this up in November As discussed earlier in the meeting, it was agreed that there was strong feeling about this strategy and it was decided that it should be circulated. 6. Specialist Commissioning in England - update It was noted that there was a desire within NHS England for a specialist data set. However there was no extra funding available to produce this as there was no mandate or service led movement to adopt any recording of this data. It was suggested that a group be set up to look at networking panel to collect this data with an initial round table meeting that the BAA would be happy to host. It was pointed out there were 3 workshops taking place in Nottingham which had a wider remit than the specialist committee. It was thought that the networks would grow organically and start as and when people want to collaborate as the pilot groups in the North, North East and North East London grew in light of the lack of instruction that had been given to them. These networks were being placed under the auspice of Population Health Planning. There was discussion about how to develop areas of excellence for cochlear implantation and where they should be based. There was concerns raised about the level of service feedback that was given as there was no national body and it would appear that this would be a long way off. With the issue of children with speech and language difficulties the lack of nationally agreed measures was discussed, however this attitude was not encouraging for the patients and the issue of one size fits all audio care was discussed. There was further discussion about how do you update the system with new measures as time can be a crucial factor in this. The existence of care plans set out for the US, Sweden and Australia were discussed and what level of care plan should the UK follow and if there was a standard 2

3 for care plans in existence. IOI-HA had produced a 3 question questionnaire for the gathering of data on hearing aid take up by adult patients. There were 2 other questionnaires that had been produced by companies, but it was not clear what was happening with the data once it had been collected. Adrian Davies said that he would send these questionnaires to Mel Ferguson for review. It was reported that NHS England had not been keeping profiles of user needing treatment. Elderly care was also discussed as it was felt that this was not given priority as hearing loss was considered a side effect of getting old and therefore was not considered to be a top ten health issue so was not attracting funding. There was a report due in July on the issue. There was also a discussion regarding the targeting of hearing tests amongst the adult population, eg those with diabetes, glaucoma or memory loss. 7. Paediatric Audiological Medicine Further discussion regarding when hearing aids/implants are prescribed the lack of uptake due to the appearance of the aids/implants and how it was perceived amongst the general populace. A report has been sent to Royal College of Paediatrians and child health about incorporating paediatric Audiological Medicine training with community needs. BAFA is currently carrying out a census to try and identify the extent of lack of people. BAFA had a successful meeting in January. Gill Painter has ed back about the fact comments have been submitted. One person being trained on a pilot scheme, but not sure at what they are at. 8. APD update This has moved on quite a bit, Teachers for Deaf do not have any training or qualifications to do anything beyond the teaching of deaf children otherwise they leave themselves open to further problems. The advice that is being given to the schools is to refer the child, once diagnosed by GOSH, back to GOSH and then if needed to the local educational psychology service. As it is down to the school to take action, it should be feasible for the school to buy the FM equipment recommended by GOSH as they do have access to Special Needs Funding budgets and therefore be able to keep the child in a mainstream school. If the School has to request 6,000 or more then the school is able to apply to Higher Special Needs Block. Online advice is available from Deaf Services on the placement and type of equipment available. It was reported that due to the nature of the equipment being recommended most schools were turning to Deaf Services for assistance although this was outside of the remit of Deaf Services as the child quite often has normal hearing otherwise. 3

4 Parents of children diagnosed with APD are often found to be quite demanding and a drain on available limited resources. And it has been suggested that there is a link between the social class of the family and the amount of resources and support demanded from the parents. As you cannot be pigeon holing a child with APD, it was discussed that it may be best for the child to be referred to an educational psychologist to have the diagnosis reaffirmed as it can be quite difficult to diagnose. Funding and research into APD is at the moment, limited, but this should increase as more people become aware of the condition. AQP Mel Ferguson reported on a test called Eclipse that a colleague had developed and will be forwarding a link to this shortly. This test should be able to identify a large range of speech, language impairment, audiology needs in children. The test is hoped to improve the diagnosis of APD once it is published in March AQP - Action on Hearing Loss Still asking for short term evaluation and they have concerns have about the long term evaluations which are being done partially with the Health Foundation on the global provision of services which they are trying to ensure will be robust enough. They feel that they are no further on than they were previously. It was noted that the data collection for these evaluations had started late in the day and that could be hampering the delivery of Teachers for the Deaf It was reported that they feel that there is an information vacuum in terms of evaluations. AQP uptake is not being reflected in the statistics being reported back, in ,000 people went to private clinics instead of seeing an audiologist in a hospital or NHS environment. The demand for audiology services recorded by the NHS said that in the year ending November ,183 people had been referred whilst up to November ,163 people had been referred showing that demand for audiology services had not changed. The number of hearing aids that were coming on to the UK market both NHS and Private is up about 15% - (Eurotrack) showing that there was an increase in demand for hearing aids. With the steady demand of referrals it was not clear where the increase had come from as there was not enough information captured. With this lack of information being captured, it could not be shown how this new delivery model had impacted on the patient group that it had been intended to target. It is thought that the AQP commissioners may have uncollated data that may give further insight in to how the delivery 4

5 model is working as they do get information from the AQPs about the patients that they are treating. Currently the AQP commissioners have no requirement on them to do anything with this information. CCGs were also discussed and the general feedback from those present is that there is a lack of understanding about AQPs and how to progress. Alliance (Brian Lamb) is proposing to send a letter to keep the matter alive, and it was suggested that HABUK along with BSA or BAA do the same as it would do no harm for HABUK to write and request the interim report to see if patients are getting a good level of service. 9. Briefing Reports from all members Adam is to be contacted about his views and response that he was minuted to provide in the last meetings minutes. BAEA Gary Webster reported that since his last attendance that the new guide to the role of the educational audiologist had been published on their website replacing the 2007 edition with yearly updates thereafter. BAEA are also looking to work with Mary Haire Training who are the only providers of the MSc: Educational Audiology and now have a volunteer panel of practising educational audiologists who are working with Joy Rosenburg who is the course lead. The MSc course for mohair training is currently moving from University of Oxford to the University of Hertfordshire. The development of digital wireless radio systems and it appears to be the hot topic of discussion for BAEA. Mel Ferguson mentioned that one of her students is evaluating the systems with help from Phonak and Gary invited her to attend one of these meetings which Phonak will also be in attendance. Mel Ferguson is put the student in to contact with Gary. Hearing Link They are continuing to roll out in local areas support to loop users to improve the quality and the standard of existing loops and have managed to get a date in mid March to have a meeting with Hearing Loops to address the issue of quality and standards. Also developing a tool for audiology service users to rate their experience satisfaction with the provider. They also attended a summit in Denmark of the International Audiology fraternity looking forward to 2020 and felt that the only issue that needed to put forward was the impact especially with children of hearing enhancing electronic consumer products which they felt was going to be very interesting. Highlighting the need for information to be made available to the general public as these devices become more available as 5

6 most of these devices are not being produced by the normal hearing aid manufacturers. It was felt that these devices will have more of an impact in developed countries eg USA where consumers have to pay for their own hearing aids. These devices are marketed as Personal Sound Amplification Product (PSAP): a device that amplifies sound, these are being marketed in the USA as sound amplification device and some of these devices are rivalling in quality professionally fitted aids. It is understood that these devices are working off next generation Bluetooth technology with 4 basic protocols although the better ones appear to be being based off Apple technology. BSHAA Their standards for proficiencies are currently out for consultation with the HADCP, after their review last year and invited HABUK members to review the same document which is available on the BSHAA website. BSHAA are looking to create course module on Tinnitus as there is a lack of training on this available later this year. MCR Mel Ferguson distributed notes to those present and would send electronic copies to Susan Paris for distribution. Mel discussed the highlights that the BRU had had this year and results of studies that had been completed since the previous meeting. MCR have launched an experiment on noise exposure and noise damage and details can found on their website and were keen to receive from other sources. 10. Updates from: No updates were received from Scotland, Northern Ireland or Wales as no representatives were present. 11. Any other None business Dates and venues of 2014 Close of Meeting The next meeting is diarised for 4 th June but it was decided to see if another room could be found for some time during the same week. Action on Hearing Loss offered the use of their meeting Rooms for the next meeting. Susan to send out invites for the next meeting The Meeting closed at 3:20pm 6