Cancer treatment.
No, not this sort of doctor, silly.
Time and again on PM we've discussed the provision of cancer drugs on the NHS. The time it takes to get them approved; their cost, and the fact that treatment can depend on where you are in the UK.
Some people with cancer have tried to get round some of those problems by paying for drugs privately - only to find that in their dying months the NHS denied them treatment. There's a ban on cancer patients paying for top up treatments in the NHS - something known as .
Until recently, England's health secretary Alan Johnson publicly opposed co-payments, because letting patients pay for their own drugs would create a two-tier NHS. Now he's announced a review.
The Review will be led by Professor Mike Richards, National Clinical Director for Cancer, and will report by October 2008 to the Secretary of State for Health. The Review's objectives are:
1. To examine current policy relating to patients who choose to pay privately for drugs that are not funded on the NHS and who, as a result, are required to pay for the care that they would otherwise have received free on the NHS.
2. To make recommendations on whether and how policy or guidance could be clarified or improved.
3. In making recommendations, to take into account:
a. the importance of enabling patients to have choice and personal control over their healthcare; and
b. the need to uphold the founding principle of the NHS that treatment is based on clinical need not ability to pay, and to ensure that NHS services are fair to both patients and taxpayers.
The Review will taken account of:
the Government's wider strategy for improving the quality and effectiveness of NHS services; developing policy and practice arising from the NHS Next Stage Review and Constitution.
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