Prescription Drugs

(asked on 28th October 2014) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, whether medicines which do not meet the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence's (NICE) Technology Appraisal and Highly Specialised Technologies prioritisation criteria or fall outside NICE's remit are automatically referred to NHS England for an appraisal.


Answered by
George Freeman Portrait
George Freeman
This question was answered on 4th November 2014

We are informed by NHS England that it will only consider those medicines that it is responsible for through its directly commissioned services, primarily specialised commissioning.

Where the National institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is unlikely to appraise a medicine, the specialised services clinical reference group will be asked to review the evidence for the medicine in question and draft a clinical commissioning policy.

Those medicines that fall outside NHS England’s direct commissioning responsibility will need to be considered by individual clinical commissioning groups.

Medicines that are not recommended by NICE are generally not considered by NHS England for routine commissioning.

Reticulating Splines