Heart Diseases

(asked on 24th June 2014) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the availability of free prescriptions for congenital heart disease across England.


Answered by
Norman Lamb Portrait
Norman Lamb
This question was answered on 1st July 2014

No assessment has been made of the availability of free prescriptions for people with congenital heart disease in England.

The list of medical conditions that give entitlement to apply for an National Health Service prescription charge medical exemption certificate are:

- a permanent fistula (including caecostomy, colostomy, laryngostomy, or ileostomy) which requires continuous surgical dressing or requires an appliance;

- forms of hypoadrenalism (including Addison's disease) for which specific substitution therapy is essential;

- diabetes insipidus or other forms of hypopituitarism;

- diabetes mellitus (except where treatment of the diabetes is by diet alone);

- hypoparathyroidism;

- myasthenia gravis;

- myxoedema (that is, hypothyroidism requiring thyroid hormone replacement);

- epilepsy requiring continuous anti-convulsive therapy;

- continuing physical disability which prevents the patient from leaving their residence without the help of another person; and

- patients undergoing treatment for cancer, the effects of cancer or the effects of current or previous cancer treatment.

All other medical conditions do not entitle patients to apply for an NHS prescription charge medical exemption certificate.

The extensive system of exemption arrangements, including for those on low incomes who may struggle to pay for their prescriptions, which is in place means that around 90% of all prescription items are already dispensed free of charge. Prescription Prepayment Certificates are also available for those who have to pay NHS prescription charges and need multiple prescriptions.

Reticulating Splines