Jim Shannon – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jim Shannon on 2016-07-18.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what plans his Department has to make electrical stimulation treatment for sight loss available through the NHS.

David Mowat

Clinical commissioning groups are responsible for commissioning health care services to meet the needs of their local populations.

There is no National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidance on the use of electrical stimulation for the treatment for sight loss. Where NICE guidance does not exist on a particular treatment, it is for local National Health Service commissioners to make funding decisions based on an assessment of the available evidence and on the basis of an individual patient’s clinical circumstances.

NHS commissioners are required to have in place clear and transparent arrangements for local decision-making on the funding of treatments and for considering exceptional funding requests.