Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how NHS England's decision regarding the draft clinical commissioning policy for Duodopa will be communicated to (1) the public, (2) patient organisations, and (3) healthcare professionals.

NHS England has advised that its Clinical Priorities Advisory Group recommended that Levodopa-Carbidopa intestinal gel (Duodopa) for advanced Parkinson’s disease should not be routinely commissioned by NHS England at this time. NHS England’s Directly Commissioned Services Committee endorsed this recommendation in June 2014 and agreed that this technology should be considered further through NHS England’s prioritisation process. The decisions of the committee were communicated via a stakeholder newsletter which is accessible both via direct mail, and through the NHS England website.

Further work has been completed on NHS England’s draft clinical commissioning policy and this is now included in the prioritisation process alongside other new treatments for consideration for 2015-16.

The decision-making framework for NHS England’s prioritisation process was discussed at its Board meeting on 17 December 2014. The Board agreed the high level principles of the framework and NHS England plans to launch a public consultation about the principles and approach to decision-making from January 2015. Members of the public, patient organisations and healthcare professionals will be able to feed their comments in via this route.

NHS England continues to keep the range of services and treatments available to patients under review as new evidence and expert guidance becomes available.