Remsima for crohn's disease and moving to UK/London

[jay123]

Hi,

I have crohn's disease and I'm being treated by remsima, every 8 weeks. For several years I have no problems at all.
I have received great job offer (probably the best thing one can do in my field). The only downside is that I'd have to move abroad to London and I'm not sure if it would be possible.
Does anyone have experience moving to UK and being on remsima? Is it even possible? Would 8 weeks be enough? Can I do something in advance (eg. checking with gastroenterologist there) prior my moving to London? Or do I have to wait for registering to the NHS via GP?
Company also provides some private insurance. Can remsima possibly be covered from this? Or the most likely it won't?

Thank you in advance for any advice/reply.

 

[Catherine]

Hi Jay, where are you from?

The daughter moved from Australia to UK for two years and her medications were all private scripts.

 

[alex145]

Hi,

I don't often look at the site, but I have experience of this from Scotland to England - inside UK so it should have been easy for me.
My point of note would be this - this is for the NHS, if it's private and you're going to pay, I'm sure it's easy but that's not gonna be cheap.

If your going to do this locate the hospital near where you would live asap when you can and get in touch with the dep.
It takes time to sort out the details, and they will make you wait for your infusion as long as they like (and you won't know if they will fund it)
- I did this still has to wait 1.5 months more than I should have - if you really need your infusions you should think on this.

Downsides (in England)

Infusions take a long time in hospitals in London for a 2-hour infusion expect to need to take 4 hours min.

Your funding will be re-evaluated once a year, if you are clinically well they are likely to take it away from you!
So if it works well you won't get it for sure long term.

As above you will need to have new scans to allow the funding of the treatment each year or so, you might get it with scans / notes from elsewhere to start, but I really would not count on it being funded unless they agree to it.

NHS in london is really stressed, compared to other areas of the UK, compared to Germany and the Netherland in my experience it is very poor.

Think on the above, it can be sorted but count on needing to take at least 1/2 day off per treatment (weekdays only normally 10-5 hours).
And a couple of days for scans etc. This can make things difficult in London which is competitive in jobs.

In short, its totally possible I've met plenty EU folks on IV units, but it could be way better, and I would not move unless I was in good health.

I'm lucky in that I react badly to other medications so it's (comparatively) easy for me to get it, but it's such a massive stress.

Good luck.
Alex,