The NHS Constitution gives patients the right to expect local decisions about the funding of medicines and treatments to be made rationally.
To support this right in the NHS Constitution, the DH has published guiding principles for decision-making processes supporting local decision-making about medicines. These Guiding Principles provide a framework to be used by PCTs when developing and refining their decision-making processes to address the requirements of the NHS Constitution.
Application of the DH Guiding Principles is supported by the NPC Handbook of initial good practice guidance and resources to help PCTs review and develop current decision-making processes about medicines and treatments. Ideally this ongoing work should be undertaken by PCTs with input from their Strategic Commissioning Groups, clinical networks and Provider Trusts and in collaboration with other PCTs, where appropriate.
A baseline survey of PCTs in the second half of 2008 informed the development of the Handbook of good practice and provides a baseline measure of where PCTs and SHAs stand with regard to local decision-making processes to allow changes to be tracked over time.
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