NICE loses power to decide on new drugs

1 November 2010

The government body which assesses the effectiveness of new treatments is to lose its powers to deny drugs for use on the NHS.

NICE (the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence) will continue to give advice on new drugs but will not have the final say on which treatment a patient receives.

Instead, groups of GPs will decide whether a drug should be funded or not.

Meg McArthur, Senior Policy Officer at Breakthrough Breast Cancer, says: "We hope these proposals mean when cancer drugs have been proven to be effective they are made available as quickly as possible.

"It's important that patients have good information about what drugs they could be eligible to receive, and also how effective these treatments may be for them.

"We will be participating in the consultation to ensure the views of people affected by breast cancer are clearly heard."

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