Back pain sufferer John Sams to pay for injections

Parkinsons Disease victim John Sams has again been denied NHS funding for the injections, despite a fresh plea for the assistance from his consultant.

But he has also been told he can self-fund the injections at York Hospital after all, and is due to receive the first one next Monday at a cost of £200.

The Press reported last month that Mr Sams, 69, of Upper Poppleton , was unable to get NHS funding for injections despite arguments by his back consultant that he had an exceptional case. However, when he tried to pay £200 for the injections to be performed at York Hospital, he was told the list was full.

His wife, Denise, said then they were stuck in a catch-22 situation, and she felt as if her husband was being “tortured.”

She said he needed to keep moving because of his Parkinson’s, but the back pain was preventing him from being able to complete the limited exercise he was otherwise able to do.

Mrs Sams said yesterday they would assess how effectively next week’s injection tackled the pain, which was caused by a trapped nerve in his lower back.

If it worked, they would probably then lodge a formal appeal against the repeated decision of NSH North Yorkshire and York to refuse funding.

Dr David Geddes, the primary care trust’s medical director, said last month that its individual funding panel, which made decisions about whether to fund treatments that the trust did not routinely commission, consisted of a range of professionals including doctors and took into account their clinical and cost effectiveness.

He said it stopped routinely commissioning back pain injections in 2010, based on a lack of clinical evidence around their effectiveness.

York Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust said then that demand for its self-pay service was very high but NHS-funded care was its core business, and therefore took priority.

There was therefore a wait for the self-funded service, but it intended to treat such patients in due course.