Pharmac takes over hospital meds.

23 July 2010
7 Comments

Hi guys, hot off the press news for you all (thanks to Lisa and Chris for sending me info) – an announcement was made yesterday that Pharmac is now going to take over the buying and managing of hospital medications/equipment – they previously only did “community pharmaceuticals”.

The most interesting part of the article (link below) is the part where they say they’ll take on insulin pumps first:

Ryall also said Pharmac  would have a role in the new Shared Services Agency in the management and procurement of medical devices, starting with insulin pumps.

Full article here:

http://tvnz.co.nz/health-news/pharmac-takes-over-new-responsibilities-3669595

What are your thoughts, people? I suppose my take on it is that we shouldn’t get too excited, because it’s not like…

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By Nic on 23 July 2010 at 7.00 am
Posted in Funding, Insulin Pumps, Medical Services
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Now Diabetes Southland stands to lose?

26 June 2010
1 Comment

Thanks to Candice, who sent me this info. Apparently if you live in Queenstown you may now lose the one and only diabetes nurse in the area. If you wish to lend your voice to the campaign you can join the Facebook group, here: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=130667010290322&v=wall#!/group.php?gid=130667010290322&v=info

“Guys… I need your help, PLEASE read and join this to help me and my family… Please send on to anyone you know of who could support us too, it’s really important. Take two mins to read this:

For those of you who don’t know, my sis has Type ONE diabetes (also called insulin dependent diabetes or juvenile onset diabetes mellitus) which is the GENETIC form of diabetes, an inherited autoimmune…

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By Nic on 26 June 2010 at 6.32 pm
Posted in Community, Medical Services
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Man bags and HbA1cs.

25 June 2010
16 Comments

I got an email from a reader about her son this week and thought I’d throw the question out to the community to see if we can get any other ideas (Aaron has already contributed a few). Can you guys help with this please?

T is 14 and when we go out, his supplies are in a bag that gets slung over his shoulder – well, his Dad’s shoulder actually. But he is now at that age when he doesn’t want to have to carry a ‘man bag’ with him. I guess it is just not cool.
But there is not way I let him go off with his mates without his jelly beans and meter.

Aaron, as an…

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By Nic on 25 June 2010 at 8.31 am
Posted in Community, Hypos & Hypers, Kids & Teens, Medical Services, Monitoring
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Aaron: My endo made my day.

11 June 2010
7 Comments

I was at the diabetes clinic a couple of weeks ago (twice in a week actually) to see the diabetes nurse and my then endo as happens once a year for the Dr and bi-annually for the nurse like the rest of you.

After twenty years of these visits and numerous Drs, nurses, dieticians others I had reached the point more than once of being quite fed up with it all. That said, I have to say that the team I have at the moment from the dietician to the specialist and the nurse are absolutely fantastic. I’ve not seen them that much yet because they are all relatively new and I only go once a year but what I…

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By Aaron on 11 June 2010 at 9.30 am
Posted in Complications, General, Medical Services, Monitoring, Slice of Life
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Aaron: CGMS, here I come.

9 June 2010
12 Comments

I was at the outpatients clinic recently to see my diabetes nurse for our 6 monthly catch up and it couldn’t possibly have been better timing I have to say.

At the time I’d had a couple of rough weeks due to a lot of stress from various things that had been going on (which lead to this post) so it was good timing to be meeting with the diabetes nurse to be able talk over the hiccups and what might be going on to cause them. Lots and lots of highs had been causing me no end of problems and I needed to talk through some strategies to get things back on track.

One of the…

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By Aaron on 9 June 2010 at 9.30 am
Posted in CGMS, General, Medical Services, Monitoring, Technology & Equipment, Travel
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