Hive Health

We thought hard about how to wish our clients and friends a happy Christmas this year. The following video was my genius idea and was created with love and warbling.

Please enjoy the Hive team’s rendition of a merry Christmas ditty. Our own Kate Kinsey and Helen Scott are playing their respective violin and cello and we hope you agree: they make us sound quite good actually!

It is of course a time for giving. For every hit on our website in the month of December, we will donate £1 to a Christmas charity fund. We hope to raise £1,500 (we get about 1200 hits per month on average) and will divide this between two excellent charities Crisis and Chance.

Please enjoy the video and help us get lots of clicks this Christmas. From all at Hive, a very Merry Christmas and a big thanks for your business in 2010.

Viagra burst onto an expectant  market 12 years ago on the 1^st of July. Wow, how time flies!

I was fortunate enough to have been on the UK launch team for Viagra, and we were desperate to ensure that it was promoted ethically and was given enough space to be taken seriously – as a product that met a genuine patient need. One that impacted on the lives of millions of people.

The press went mad, “sex drug” shouted from every red top. Knee jerk Health Secretary Frank Dobson’s fears about rampant demand introduced restrictions, which clamped down treatment provision resulting in only 17% of those men who would benefit getting a prescription. GPs were told to restrict their prescribing to one pill per week. All driven by fears that the NHS would be swamped by demands for the new drug.

It’s all seems ages ago and now strange to think of a Health Secretary wanting to dictate the sex lives of their citizens. ‘Once a week Dobing’ was laughed at by many, but still acceptable.

The category perceptions changed, and ED was forced into the sunlight. Now discussed and treated  in a very different world. Walking in Soho with Debbie I spied this photo, a demonstration that perceptions change, but somewhere some of your audience remains intransient.  How things have moved on!

We offered the use of our offices to Epilepsy Action early this year as a handy central location for their weekend chair meetings. In return, we’ve received some key insights from the team as to how patients can be helped to cope with the condition. Since then, we have become firm friends with Barbara, Janet, Marie, Mary, Phil and the rest of their London forum.

We had the pleasure of seeing the group on Saturday as they came to the new Hive offices to hold their end of year meeting. I thought it started well, arriving in plenty of time to let them into the offices…until I realised that I had left the office keys at home. A mad call to Kate hoping she was in town, a mad dash from Kate to drop off her keys! Thanks Kate. We all decamped to Starbucks next door in the meantime.

All dramas sorted, 14 people settled into our boardroom to hold their meeting. My husband Simon and my two boys headed to Hamleys for some hard core toy shopping. Three hours later, I rejoined Barbara and the gang for Christmas nibbles and drinks. It was great to see the guys again and we look forward to sharing our space with them in 2010.

Ian handed me a fascinating article on ‘Should patients be paid for taking their medication?’. (He also said it was high time I wrote a blog. )The story described a trial where patients with mental illness were paid £15 for each fortnightly visit to their clinic where they were administered their depot.

My immediate answer was to say, of course they bloody shouldn’t be paid! Treatments are prescribed to make people feel better and help them function in the world, surely that is incentive enough?

Hold on, I thought – it’s plainly not enough. Poor compliance is a fact of mental healthcare. It’s easy to speculate on why these patients would avoid their medication. We need to ask about the conversations they are having with their HCPs. Are professionals helping patients reach an informed decision about treatments?

Well, at least one survey says not really. Here, 59% of patients taking an antipsychotic reported that other treatment options had not been discussed. Almost two thirds said that they hadn’t been given written information prior to starting their medication. And 46% said hey hadn’t been warned about its potential side effects.

The NHS and HCPs need to look at the way they are engaging with patients. How many have read the NICE guidance on patient adherence and choice, published in January? And how is the NHS supporting them in implementing change?

Of course, it’s not easy for anyone. The befuddling thing about informed choice is that patients can refuse medication, and the professional’s obligation is to respect this decision. But what if the individual is antisocial, or a danger to self or others? Why are we paying these guys, really – what are the savings down the line? To make a judgment on this pilot, we need to know more about these patients other than that they are poor compliers.

If the scheme sees the light, bitter laughter will accompany jokes about kids being paid to go to school and likewise to adults for behaving on a night out. No-one’s going to like the idea of a pay-for-peace society. Whatever happens, let’s hope these patients get something positive out of it.