Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, for what reasons NHS England has established screening groups to consider individual funding requests (IFRs) before a formal review by an IFR panel can take place; what information IFR screening groups require before making a decision on whether to submit a request to an IFR panel; whether decisions made by IFR screening groups can be appealed; how many IFR screening groups are in operation; what information is collected on decisions taken by IFR screening groups; and if he will make a statement.

NHS England has advised that screening panels are in place to ensure that individual funding requests (IFRs) not appropriate for its IFR panel to consider are screened out (e.g. those for services commissioned by clinical commissioning groups or those where the treatment is already commissioned by NHS England). For the screening to take place, a fully completed IFR request form must be submitted. The IFR request form is available at:

www.england.nhs.uk/commissioning/policies/gp/

An appeal cannot be made against the decision of a screening panel unless further information pertinent to the request becomes available. Screening panels take place every week in the four NHS England regions.

NHS England collects data centrally on the numbers of IFRs screened but this is not broken down to individual drug level.