Eight patients in Herefordshire suffering from rare forms of cancer may have lost their last chance of life after a league table survey revealed the county’s Primary Care Trust rejected their applications for innovative drugs.
Figures released under Freedom of Information Act requests from the national Rarer Cancers Forum show that Herefordshire’s PCT rejected eight applications – but agreed to fund seven – after patients applied to have rare drugs supplied to treat their cancers.
The table shows Herefordshire as 13th in PCT percentage rejected rates. Nottingham City and South West Essex had 100% rejection rate, while Havering, Wakefield and Shropshire had 0% rejection rates.
Commenting on what it described as a post-code lottery the Forum said: “More than 1,300 cancer patients have been left to die in the past 20 months because they were not deemed exceptional enough to receive cancer treatment on the NHS. They will have been forced either to go without the life-giving treatments or to pay privately for the top-up drugs and risk having all their other care withdrawn”.
A statement from Herefordshire PCT said it carefully considers each case on merit at its Named Patient Panel.
The spokesman said: “The guidelines surrounding the criteria used by the panel to assess eligibility are available on request from the PCT, and will shortly be available for download from www. herefordshire.nhs.uk – the PCT cannot comment on individual cases, and cannot release the names of the drugs in question to protect patient confidentiality.
“In some instances there may be only one request for a particular drug and this could lead to a particular patient being identifiable.
“There will always be drugs that are licensed as safe to prescribe but have not yet been appraised by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) to determine whether they offer good value to the NHS.
“It is right that PCTs should make the decision on funding for such drugs, taking account of local circumstances and individual cases.
Meanwhile, Macmillan Cancer Support, whose target of £1.5 million was met by the Herefordshire public to support new chemotherapy units at Hereford County Hospital, said the Forum was completely right to highlight the maze that cancer patients are faced with when a treatment, recommended by their doctor, is denied by their PCT”.
“We have long been calling for PCTs to make their exceptional funding process more transparent so patients know how they can contest decisions,” the group said.
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