David Amess – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by David Amess on 2015-10-29.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the suitability of individual funding requests for preventive treatments and the criteria to demonstrate exceptional clinical circumstances in relation to such requests.

George Freeman

NHS England has advised that if there is a commissioning policy in place for a treatment, and the patient fulfils the treatment criteria contained within this, then an individual funding request (IFR) is not required, as the treatment will be routinely funded. It is only if the patient’s treatment falls outside of the criteria that an IFR would be appropriate or if there is no policy in place for the treatment/indication.

Neither the Department nor NHS England has made any assessment of the suitability of IFRs for preventative treatments.