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NHS patients in top-up drugs bid Revised guidance for top-up drugs
(about 8 hours later)
The rules banning patients in Scotland from paying for medicines while accessing NHS services need to be clarified, the health secretary said. Revised guidance on patients receiving drugs not available on the NHS will make the system clearer, Scottish ministers have said.
Nicola Sturgeon has pledged a review of the guidelines on "co-payments" after a report into the case by Holyrood's petitions committee. But Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon said drugs should be available on the health service where they were proven to be "clinically effective".
The committee report called for more clarity on whether cancer patients can receive non-NHS drugs. Her comments came in a debate raised by the death of Michael Gray, from Buckie.
MSPs are set to debate the issue in the Scottish Parliament later. The 53-year-old, who died in April from bowel cancer, needed the drug cetuximab, for which his family paid.
The debate follows the case of Michael Gray, 53, from Buckie in Moray, who died in April from bowel cancer and needed the drug cetuximab. Although licensed in Scotland, it was not approved by Mr Gray's local health authority - NHS Grampian - although it is available on the NHS in Wales.
Although licensed in Scotland, it was not approved by NHS Grampian, although it is available on the NHS in Wales. Scots health boards can consider individual cases for making new drugs available to patients in exceptional circumstances.
Ms Sturgeon said: "The principle of NHS care available according to need not the ability to pay is one that I - and all of Scotland - hold dear." Ms Sturgeon pledged a review of the rules banning patients from paying for medicines while accessing NHS services, known as "co-payments".
She pledged a review of the guidelines on "co-payments". "It is important to stress that cases of co-payment must be and always will be the exception and not the norm," she told parliament.
The health secretary said: "Some things are very clear. As things stand you cannot pay the NHS to access care which would not otherwise be available and there are no plans to change that principle. "Patients can't and shouldn't, in my view, be able to pay the NHS to provide care that's not otherwise available.
"The question here is that if someone exercises their right to access some of their care in the private sector, to what extent should they be able to get the rest of their care on the NHS?" "That would lead to a two-tier system."
Ms Sturgeon said the rules needed to be clear to prevent decisions being taken on a "case-by-case basis". Patients had a right to access care in the private sector, but, Ms Sturgeon said, it would not be appropriate for this to be paid for where the NHS and private treatment were so interwoven they could not be separated.
"There are some situations where the care that a patient is getting is so interwoven that you could not separate out the element to be provided privately from the elements to be provided on the NHS, without compromising patient safety and good clinical governance," she said. Mr Gray's widow, Tina McGeever, attended Holyrood for the debate, which came after parliament's health committee called for more clarity in the way that health boards decide whether cancer patients can receive non-NHS drugs.
"There are other cases where that might not be the case and concurrent private and NHS treatment might be possible."