Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what discussions he has had with the Clinical Director Specialised Commissioning for NHS England and the external assessments centres at Newcastle and York on the Commissioning through Evaluation programme.
NHS England has established an innovative Commissioning through Evaluation (CtE) programme to gather new data to support future policy decisions for treatments that are not routinely commissioned on the basis of current evidence of clinical and cost effectiveness, but nonetheless show significant promise as future National Health Service treatments.
The CtE programme is run in partnership with the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) who provide independent advice and evaluation of the individual schemes. As part of this role, NICE secures the assistance of External Assessment Centres (EACs) to aid the collection and analysis of data. NICE has commissioned the joint Newcastle and York EAC to assist in the evaluation of three cardiology based CtE schemes, on behalf of NHS England. They are responsible for directly managing the relationship.
The new Director for Specialised Commissioning is due to assume his responsibilities at the beginning of 2016, and as such has not yet met with the Secretary of State.