Uncertainty over new cancer fund
pharmafile | October 6, 2010 | News story | Sales and Marketing | Cancer, NHS, government
The UK government has launched its £50 million interim fund to give greater access to new cancer medicines.
The new money has been welcomed by patient groups and the pharma industry, but there are misgivings about how the fund will be administered.
Moreover, there are fears the government will cut the permanent annual fund from the £200 million originally promised, meaning far fewer patients would benefit.
The Department of Health says the fund is aimed at giving access to drugs either rejected or not reviewed by NICE, and for patients for whom other existing funds routes have been ‘explored and exhausted’.
This includes patients who go through the ‘exceptional circumstances’ route managed by local Primary Care Trusts, now known as Individual Funding Requests (IFRs).
Figures from the Rarer Cancers Foundation suggest around 3,000 patients go through this route every year, with around a third having their request refused.
If the system were to remain unchanged, this would mean just 1,000 patients a year would stand to benefit. On a political level, this would prevent many of the kind of cases which have hit the headlines regularly in recent years.
The most notable example this year was Nikki Phelps, whose case was championed by the Daily Mail after being refused access to Sutent by an exceptional circumstances committee. The case came to light in April shortly before the general election campaign, when Andrew Lansley promised to introduce the £200 million fund in April 2011. It was pressure from cancer patient groups and the media which led to the government setting up the interim £50m fund to avoid a long wait until April.
New Clinically-led Panels (CLPs) led by doctors have been set up in each Strategic Health Authority region will decide on the cases, but there is no guarantee each patient will be granted access.
Paul Catchpole, value and access director, APBI, said many of the practicalities of how the Fund will work remain unclear.
“The Department of Health has distributed the £50 million to the SHAs, but from there it is essentially up to them what happens to the money. They could hold on to it or they could distribute it down [to PCTs] – currently it isn’t clear.
“The further it gets distributed, the better it is for the patients. The SHAs could send this money down to the 30 or so cancer networks which could then be sent down further to individual PCTs.”
Catchpole added: “£50 million is an important step but it does need to be sized to help as many patients as possible.”
Catchpole said that the ABPI is currently conducting its own estimate on the required size of the Fund, and that this should be published ‘imminently’.
A report by the British Oncology Pharmacy Association (BOPA) published in September estimated that the cost of supplying the relevant drugs should be between £85 million and £119 million, easily exceeding the £50 million budget.
The Rarer Cancers Foundation, which the government has used to make its own estimate, rejected BOPA’s costing, however, and says the fund will be sufficient.
The government has made clear that even the ‘permanent’ Cancer Drugs Fund is itself only a temporary measure prior to the anticipated introduction of a Value-Based Pricing system in 2014.
He said the aim was to “truly empower patients” by giving them more control over their care and access to “clinically effective drugs that their doctors believe could improve their quality of life.”
He added: “I want to assure all patients that I am working towards longer term plans to change the way we pay for drugs so patients get better access to drugs and the NHS and taxpayers get better value for money.”
A key date for all NHS funding decisions will be 20 October, when Chancellor George Osborne unveils his spending review, which is certain to outline further cuts and belt-tightening measures across government departments. The NHS is expected to escape the worst of the cuts (uniquely being guaranteed continued increases in its budget), but individual funds, such as the CDF could be scaled back.
The clearest signal of this came in July when health minister Lord Howe said £200 million was now “an aspirational figure”.
Ben Adams
Related Content
A community-first future: which pathways will get us there?
In the final Gateway to Local Adoption article of 2025, Visions4Health caught up with Julian …
The Pharma Files: with Dr Ewen Cameron, Chief Executive of West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust
Pharmafile chats with Dr Ewen Cameron, Chief Executive of West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust, about …
Is this an Oppenheimer moment for the life sciences industry?
By Sabina Syed, Managing Director at Visions4Health In the history of science, few initiatives demonstrate …
