Andrew Gwynne – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andrew Gwynne on 2016-01-14.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to the Answer of 6 January 2016 to Question 20580, if his Department will ask NHS England to allow patient access to technologies assessed through NHS England’s Commissioning through Evaluation programme during the analysis phase on the same basis as during the first stage of the programme.

George Freeman

Whilst any patients already treated under a Commissioning through Evaluation (CtE) scheme will continue to receive appropriate follow up care, no new patients will be funded by NHS England during the subsequent analysis phase.

This ensures that, during the analysis phase, NHS England continues its current policy of not funding treatments which have insufficient evidence of clinical and / or cost effectiveness.

In turn, this means that NHS England can direct public funds to evidence based care. It also allows CtE programme funding to be redirected to support patient recruitment in another area of specialised care where further evaluation data is needed.