Department of Health written question – answered at on 2 March 2015.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps NICE and NHS England take to ensure that (a) mandatory NICE health technology assessment guidance is fully implemented by clinical commissioning groups and (b) the up-take of innovative medicines is in line with NICE's expectations.
National Health Service commissioners are legally required to fund drugs and treatments recommended by technology appraisal guidance issued by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) within three months of the publication of final guidance. NICE offers a range of resources to support implementation of its technology appraisal guidance at a local level that are tailored to each topic and may include resource impact assessments and clinical audit tools. NICE also employs a team of implementation consultants who work with the NHS to help to put NICE’s guidance into practice. NICE also provides the secretariat for the NICE Implementation Collaborative that is a partnership between NICE, the NHS, industry and patient groups and seeks to identify and remove barriers to implementation of NICE’s guidance. NICE is not, however, a regulator and has no remit to enforce implementation of its guidance.
We are working closely with NHS England, industry and other key stakeholders to improve the Innovation Scorecard to make it a more effective tool for identifying unjustified variation in uptake of innovative treatments in the NHS. The data from the Scorecard supports conversations between NHS England and regional/local NHS organisations about patterns of uptake across England, and for some products includes estimates of expected uptake developed by NICE on the basis of their guidance.
In addition, the Government takes the issue of ensuring rapid access to innovative therapies very seriously, which is why I have launched a major review of the pathways for the development, assessment, and adoption of innovative medicines and medical technology. This review will consider how to speed up access for NHS patients to cost-effective new diagnostics, medicines and devices, including cancer treatments and diagnostics. It will set out both short and long-term options for action by Government and relevant bodies, including NICE, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency and NHS England, to accelerate access for NHS patients to innovative medicines.
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