NHS: Drugs

(asked on 27th March 2018) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what process was used to forecast budgetary need in order to determine the £25 million annual budget allocation for products undergoing review by the NHS England specialised commissioning prioritisation process.


Answered by
Caroline Dinenage Portrait
Caroline Dinenage
This question was answered on 4th April 2018

NHS England has advised that it is expected that the recommendations from the relative prioritisation process will be received by the Specialised Services Commissioning Committee (SSCC) meeting on 19 June 2018. The aim will be to communicate the results as soon as possible following the SSCC meeting.

A process of relative prioritisation for determining discretionary investment in new specialised services was first introduced in 2016/17. Investment decisions are informed following advice from NHS England’s independently chaired Clinical Priorities Advisory Group and against a budget that is fixed annually. In 2016/17 and again in 2017/18, £25 million was set aside for this purpose. This was considered an appropriate level of investment in the context of NHS England’s Specialised Commissioning function having to achieve overall efficiency savings of approximately 2.7% and approximately 2.5% in 2016/17 and 2017/18 respectively in order to meet the financial pressures resulting from demographic growth and the legal requirement to fund all positive National Institute for Health and Care Excellence technology appraisals. Once funding is distributed following this relative prioritisation process, spend is not separately monitored.

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