Rachel Reeves – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Rachel Reeves on 2015-11-30.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, which NHS trusts make Docetaxel chemotherapy treatment available.

George Freeman

Information on which treatments are provided by different National Health Service trusts is not collected centrally.

Commissioners are legally required to fund docetaxel for the treatment of hormone-refractory metastatic prostate cancer (where the disease becomes unresponsive to hormone treatment) as recommended in the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence’s technology appraisal guidance.

NHS England has advised that it does not routinely commission docetaxel chemotherapy for the treatment of hormone sensitive prostate cancer. However, an associated policy statement is currently being developed and NHS England expects this to be published in the early part of 2016, subject to appropriate approvals and governance arrangements.