Testing Strips Limited to one brand. The end of innovation ?

C

ChaosKCW

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I just came back from the GP who told me the NHS would now suddenly only supply one brand of testing strip: "TrueResult"

I wanted to find out if anyone else in the UK has heard of this? Is it true ? If so what are they the general thoughts?

I was diagnosed Type 1 in Oct last year, and was issued with a Bayer Contour meter. I subsequently bought and paid for an expensive meter so that all my meter readings can be recorded and upload to a computer. After only 3 months of use, its magically changed and they wont supply testing strips anymore. So not only have I wasted 60 quid, but I am back to no practical solution for monitoring blood glucose. Personally I think such a move is very short sighted as the level of innovation for diabetes care is quiet high at the moment and this move can only stiffle it. Further with all the press about the NHS wanting to "improve diabetes care and treatement" this directly flies in the face of this goal. So they save a few pennies by buying bulk ? At the cost of thousands of peoples ability to easily monitor. I am sure there are those who say "you can write it down" but I am always on the go and manual recording never really works.

I would like to hear others thoughts and experiences .....
 
cally

cally

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Type of diabetes
Type 1
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Pump
Re: Testing Strips Limited to one brand. The end of innovati

Last year I had a letter from my GP/health centre saying that I had to change to a different strip.

I explained that I didn't want to change and they were fine with that. Presumably the reason they want you to change is because the true result strips are cheaper but I have no idea if they can force you to change.

I certainly hope not because I will not be happy. I also have a contour and am quite happy with it.
 
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the_anticarb

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Re: Testing Strips Limited to one brand. The end of innovati

I really hope this is not true as I just bought the usb contour and looking forward to creating some fancy looking graphs!
Incidentally the contour, which comes with 50 strips included, is actually cheaper than just buying the strips from boots, the machine plus strips £23 when you use the discount code on this website, compared to £28 for strips alone!

I've never been denied a certain type of strip, but when I was pregnant they tried to force me to use an abbot meter because it tests for DKA - even though I've never been in DKA and unlikely to as I still have a little pancreas function.
 
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ChaosKCW

Newbie
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Re: Testing Strips Limited to one brand. The end of innovati

Hi

Thanks for the responses,

The contourUSB is great and the one I got, it certainly is helpful, even gives you your 7 day average. Not sure how to proceed at this point. I am going to try writing to my GP and see if I get a response.

Keep me posted if anyone else has these kind of issues

S
 
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