ADHD referral request update:

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We have recently been made aware that the Cornwall NHS Adult ADHD service are no longer accepting individuals who have had a diagnosis completed privately into the service for a medication review and subsequent titration. Their rationale for this is that if individuals can afford to fund an assessment privately, then they can also fund medication. From our understanding, once you have medication titrated at the correct dosage by an outside agency, you can still then transfer this back under a shared care agreement to your GP to continue monitoring and prescriptions. The cost for this titration process varies by company, but also according to how many appointments are needed to achieve a good match of a medication and specific amount. We believe an estimate for this would be approximately £750-1500 over 3-6 appointments, depending on need. Medication also costs in the region of £100/month. Once stable on medication usually your GP would be able to sign up to a shared care agreement and the medication would then become prescribed by your GP at the standard NHS prescription cost of £9.65. You are likely to need to continue 6 monthly monitoring with the original prescriber. GPs are often happy to enter into shared care agreements but they are under no obligation to, so we recommend speaking to your GP before coming for an assessment.

As you can imagine many of these services have been overwhelmed by the number of individuals who are having to avoid the NHS system and therefore the timescales are affected by this. We are working to try to pursue local links for this but we are yet to find anyone providing this service in Cornwall. 

We continue to believe that finding strategies and tools and making adjustments to home and work life are a key priority following an ADHD diagnosis, and that although medication is useful for some, many do not take this up. We make a series of recommendations for you after your assessment of other avenues to pursue.