You are here
DH Guidlines on PCT Exceptional Cases Processes
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
The Department of Health has published Defining Guiding Principles for Processes supporting Local Decision Making about Medicines.
The document points out that at present the only national guidance on decision making on medicines is developed by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) and covers a specified range of products and indications.
National guidance for decision making on medicines that have not been appraised by NICE has been confined to general commissioning support and is not specific to medicines. Because there has been no national framework, local priority decisions have led to variations in responses between PCTs.
The purpose of these Guiding Principles is to "improve the consistency and quality of local decision making on medicines and to reassure patients that there will be a common, rational framework within which such decisions should be made".