The medicines watchdog, NICE, is to lose its power to turn down new medicines for use on the NHS. It will give advice on which drugs are effective, but will not decide whether patients should be given treatments their doctor recommends, the Department of Health has confirmed. Instead, groups of GPs will decide whether a drug should be funded or not. Ministers hope to make new drugs affordable to the NHS by negotiating with pharmaceutical companies on price. The plans, called value-based pricing, are set to come into effect in 2014. They are subject to consultation.
All new IVF treatment will stop in Surrey as the NHS tackles a deficit this year of £125m. The board of NHS Surrey met in Cobham on Friday to look at how to tackle "serious financial challenges". A spokesman said current courses of IVF would continue and women nearing 40 would still be considered, with IVF policy to be reviewed next November. NHS Surrey is also no longer funding some treatments including acupuncture and some cosmetic procedures. Treatments which would no longer be funded included male baldness, facial blushing, tattoo removal and spinal epidural injections for chronic back pain.
The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) has confirmed there will not be NHS funding in England and Wales for the anti-cancer drug Avastin. It is used to combat advanced bowel cancer and research shows the drug can give an extra six weeks of life. About 6,500 people per year may be eligible for the drug. But the health watchdog argued that at a cost of nearly £21,000 per patient, the drug is just too expensive.
In the recent White Paper, Equity and Excellence: Liberating the NHS, there is a commitment to providing better value from the resources available to healthcare. This requires the NHS to address variations in activity and spend. Such variations indicate the need to focus on appropriateness of care, and to investigate the possibilities that there is overuse of some interventions and that some lower value activities are undertaken. In the Atlas, Right Care presents a series 34 of maps of variation selected from topics which National Clinical Directors and others have identified as being of importance to their clinical specialty. We have worked with a wide range of teams in the Department of Health, Observatory network and primary care organisations to create this Atlas.The Atlas also contains a guide to the tools and data available for analysing health investment.
Hospitals in north Merseyside are planning to use the anti-trespass powers used to ban “hoodies” from shopping centres to shift patients who are blocking beds. NHS Sefton board papers say that from this month patients deemed fit for discharge but who refuse “transitional” care home placements will be given 48 hours’ written notice to make their own arrangements. If a patient still refuses to leave, the hospital could seek a court order for possession of their bed. A well-placed legal source told HSJ the primary care trust’s approach would rely on trespass law, which allows owners to regulate the terms on which visitors occupy their premises.
An investigation is under way into how two transplant patients were given kidneys from a donor with a rare and aggressive form of cancer. The incident at the Royal Liverpool University hospital involved organs from a woman who died at another hospital, and was later found to have had a hard-to-identify disease called intravascular B-cell lymphoma. Both patients had been preparing for live transplants from their sisters but accepted the donor kidneys instead. The recipients are now receiving chemotherapy treatment. Although cancer transmission is a known risk of transplantation among clinicians, the case raises questions about guidance to patients and whether sufficient checks are made. One senior of
NHS Blood and Transplant associate medical director Professor James Neuberger said transfer of malignancy was a very rare occurance but more organs were likely to carry diseases as donors get older. He admitted the scale of the problem was not known. A research fellow has now been appointed to find out how often infected organs are passed on to patients. Professor Neuberger said his first role was to try and get all the data together from transplant centres and then to work out strategies with clinicians to reduce risk.
A cancer patient who was supposed to receive regular check ups says he was devastated when he was finally seen and told the disease had spread. Retired teacher Henry Clark from Narberth, Pembrokeshire, needed three-monthly check ups at West Wales General Hospital, Carmarthen. But "serious failures" meant he was not seen for more than a year. Hywel Dda Health Board has been criticised for what happened and has apologised.
'A new pathway for the regulation and governance of health research' was published in January 2011. The report was prepared by a working group, chaired by Professor Sir Michael Rawlins FMedSci, convened in response to an invitation from Government to review the regulation and governance of UK health research involving human participants, their tissue or their data. The report proposes four key principles that should underpin the regulation and governance framework around health research in the UK, and makes recommendations to: * Create a new Health Research Agency (HRA) to rationalise the regulation and governance of all health research. * Include within the HRA a new National Research Governance Service to facilitate timely approval of research studies by NHS Trusts. * Improve the UK environment for clinical trials. * Provide access to patient data that protects individual interests and allows approved research to proceed effectively. * Embed a culture that value
Frances Swaine and Merry Varney are instructed by David Tracey, whose wife, Janet Tracey, sadly died in Addenbrooke’s Hospital on 7 March 2011. Following her admission to Addenbrooke’s, a ‘Do Not Attempt Cardio Pulmonary Resuscitation Order’ (known as a DNACPR or DNR) was placed on Janet’s medical notes. Janet was unaware of the DNACPR and when she became aware of it several days later, she clearly stated it was against her wishes and that she wanted to be resuscitated. As a result the DNACPR was cancelled. Several days later however a further DNACPR was entered onto her records. We have issued a judicial review and human rights claim against the NHS Trust responsible for Addenbrooke’s and against the Secretary of State for Health seeking Declarations from the Court that the Trust’s policy on the use of DNACPR is unlawful, and for the Secretary of State for Health to issue national guidance for patients and their families to know their rights concerning the use of DNACPRs.
Tom Condliff, who weighs 22st, was not considered fat enough to have a gastric bypass operation by his local Primary Care Trust and both the High Court and the Appeal Court ruled that its decision was lawful. But less than a month after his latest setback, the 62 year-old from Staffordshire has been told that his latest “individual funding request” has been successful on the grounds of his exceptional circumstances and he will now be treated. He told the BBC: “I am very, very pleased about the PCT's decision but at the same time I am rather concerned that I haven't changed since the last time the request for IFR in September last year, was put in. “It was turned down then. So I don't know why it has been granted this time. “I am looking forward to being able to get out of the house and to enjoying myself and having a decent quality of life.”
A woman died after an experienced surgeon unintentionally attempted to take out the wrong organ during an operating theatre complication. Amy Joyce Francis, 77, was due to have a kidney removed at the Royal Gwent Hospital in July 2010 but instead the surgeon tried to remove her liver. The woman from Newport suffered a fatal heart attack after a loss of blood. The coroner recorded a narrative verdict which was fully accepted by the Aneurin Bevan Health Board.
Satisfaction with NHS is high but it may be bad news Satisfaction with the NHS has been rising steadily for the past decade and is at an all-time high – but that could spell bad news for patients. The more satisfied patients are with their medical care, the more likely they are to die, US researchers have found.