NICE guidance to be enforced, says Lansley
pharmafile | January 11, 2012 | News story | Sales and Marketing | NHS, NICE, PCTs, black lists, prescribing
Local NHS organisations will no longer be allowed to ‘ban’ drugs recommended by NICE, the health secretary has said.
England’s primary care trusts often block doctors from prescribing some NICE-approved drugs, with local committees overruling NICE by judging the products to be either ineffective or too expensive.
The gap between NICE’s national guidance and local uptake has always been controversial, and now health secretary Andrew Lansely is promising to finally close it.
“We will make certain that when NICE gives a positive appraisal for a medicine, it is automatically included in formularies,” Lansley told Parliament yesterday.
The government plans to set up a new ‘NICE Implementation Collaborative’ which will monitor and enforce uptake of NICE appraisals.
The idea was first outlined by NHS chief executive Sir David Nicholson, who published a report in December called ‘Innovation, Health and Wealth.’ Among the plans outlined in the report was the promise of tighter monitoring of the uptake of innovation in the health service, including NICE-recommended medicines.
Replying to a question from Labour’s former shadow health secretary John Healey, Lansley promised to end postcode prescribing.
“The legislation is clear: when NICE gives a positive appraisal, a medicine should be available across the NHS. That was not achieved under his Government. We will achieve that, and the NHS chief executive is setting out to show how that will happen in the future.”
The government says all NICE technology appraisals will be automatically incorporated into local drug formularies, and the NICE Implementation Collaborative will support implementation of guidance.
The news will be welcomed by the UK pharmaceutical industry, which has long complained of drugs approved by NICE being outlawed by local prescribing committees.
The decision could take away the ability of PCTs (and CCGs, who take over the role from 2013) to control costs by limiting prescribing of some medicines.
GPs have in the past responded angrily to plans to give NICE guidance mandatory status, saying the final clinical decision must be left to doctors.
NICE’s chairman Professor Sir Michael Rawlins recently criticised the habit of PCTs blocking or blacklisting his organisation’s recommendations.
Professor Rawlins told the Financial Times that patients should sue PCTs if NICE-approved medicines were not available in their area.
Andrew McConaghie
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