A forum on healthcare policy and professional issues, by Glasgow-based GP and FT Weekend columnist Margaret McCartney
From the category archives:
I can’t understand the blame being apportioned in press coverage over NICE’s decision not to fund Avastin, or bevacizumab, for the treatment of advanced bowel cancer. Many patients groups are laying the blame with NICE. Is this fair?
The important bit to me is ‘cost effectiveness’. It isn’t about either cost or effectiveness alone. While Roche [...]
{ 3 comments }
If you are pregnant, NICE want you to given a carbon monoxide test. This test is to see if you smoke. But look at the flowchart on page 11- you are to have this test even if you say you don’t smoke, and even if you say you do.
I don’t think this is conducive to [...]
{ 8 comments }
Simon Singh, as mentioned before, was in the High Court last week facing the British Chiropractic Association over an article he wrote for the Guardian (which is no longer available to read on their website.)
In court, the Judge held that the phrase Singh used – ”happily promotes bogus treatments” – was capable of bearing the meaning that the [...]
{ 0 comments }
What happens when NICE says no? If NICE refuses to fund an expensive intervention to treat cancer, but the patient wishes it anyway, the patient must forgo all ‘free’ NHS care and pay for the intervention, plus all the rest of their care – ie be subsequently treated entirely as a private patient. Care then becomes [...]
{ 0 comments }
Moan as we do about the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE), which decides which drugs should be available on the NHS, the idea that there should be a rationale about rationing has been received rather differently across the Atlantic.
In the US $2,000bn is spent annually on healthcare, but only 0.1% of this is actually [...]
{ 0 comments }
