Private Physio Therapy

Liberally13

Hello Can anyone give me any advice on finding a private physio locally for my longstanding neck and shoulder/spine osteoarthritis. I have a flare up and neither ibuprofen gel paracematol tablets hardly touch the pain. I do have some tramadol from last year when I had them for gallbladder pain but even one leaves me with dizziness and headache and feeling sick and they don't help that much at a low dose. I cannot take co codamol and any type of anxiety drug which are sometimes used for pain as they cause a rise in pressure in my eyes as I have glaucoma. I would also like to know what costs would be involved. My husband tells me to call the GP and demand to be seen but honestly it is hard to get through let alone get an appoinment which is usually by telephone they are so busy and I doubt they can help other than referral which will take ages because of the current NHS situation. I am 75 and finding it hard to do a lot because of the pain. I can get to sleep at night but I don't sleep for long and only average 3-4 hours pain or no pain this has been going on for months and linked in part to anxiety. ll this not helped by both my husband and myself have Covid a few weeks a go which obviously took it toll despite being fully vaccinated. My husband suffers with various health problems including OA and is also in pain at the moment. Any advice would be grateful.

RogerBill

Hi @Liberally13 In some areas you can bypass your GP and self refer yourself directly to free, NHS funded physiotherapy services: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/physiotherapy/accessing/ I'm in Cambridgeshire and was able to do this by completing an online form. This was in 2021 and I found the service to be very good.

I then had a hip replacement operation which I had to pay for privately. As part of the package I had a number of sessions with various Nuffield Health physiotherapists who were also very good. Sorry I don't know how much this cost as the service wasn't separately identified on the bill for my operation.

However, Nuffield also do a free 12 week programme: https://www.nuffieldhealth.com/about-us/our-impact/healthy-life/joint-pain-programme They have a number of Nuffield Health Centres around the country but sadly the Cambridge Centre either don't offer this programme or there's no availability at present.

stickywicket

I'm sorry things are so rough for you right now. @RogerBill has made some g9od suggestions but,just in case, you can find chartered physios here https://www.csp.org.uk/public-patient/find-physiotherapist/physio2u . One specialising in musculo-skeletal problems would probably be your best bet. Where I live we have an excellent private clinic. Before I first used them I was anxious about cost but here's how it goes with them. They spend about 1/2hr carefully checking out the problem and all things medical. Then they work out some exercises for you and watch you do them. They print off the exercises for you and the rest is up to you. If you need to go back for any reason of course you can but no pressure to book another session. Cost about £35 - £40. They are very well thought of in the area.

Lambourne

I have had a few cortisone injections done by a private physician as the wait for NHS was too long, I found the costs varied considerably when I was searching but ended up paying around £300 for aspiration and injection. Unfortunately the last one wasn’t very effective but I had been warned it might not be. I used [xxxxx] in Angel London.

Sorry, had to remove the practice name as per the Community Guidelines, sorry you had a disappointing experience. Peter (moderator)