Tom Brake – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Tom Brake on 2016-10-07.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to encourage clinical commissioning groups to abide in full by National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines on funding in vitro fertilisation.
Nicola Blackwood
Clinical commissioning groups have a legal duty to have regard to National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines. As such, NHS England expects that all those involved in commissioning infertility treatment services to be fully aware of the importance of having regard to the NICE fertility guidelines.
Representatives from NHS England, the British Fertility Society and Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority are looking at how commissioning of in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) services could be improved. Commissioning of IVF will remain a local decision but there may be scope to improve the quality of commissioning through, for example, the development of a benchmark price that the National Health Service pays for infertility treatments and by encouraging the adoption of best practice when making clinical decisions.
