Critical issue is rapidity of review of new drugs

doi:10.1136/bmj.a779

Published 14 July 2008, doi:10.1136/bmj.a779
Cite this as: BMJ 2008;337:a779

Letters

Cancer drugs and copayments

Critical issue is rapidity of review of new drugs

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Baroness Finlay and Lord Crisp support copayments with fouressential criteria.¹ The fourth criterion will fail as the denominatoris described as a small group in the scale of the NHS’scustomer base. There is also the assurance that this is "mostly"for drugs yet to be reviewed by the National Institute for Healthand Clinical Excellence (NICE).

That is not the experience revealed by recent high profile casesin the media where cetuximab for colorectal cancer has featuredprominently and it has been rejected by both NICE and the ScottishMedicines Consortium (SMC). Finlay and Crisp say that it isa fundamental and essential principle that all drugs and devicesfully proved through appraisal should be available freely, butdo they support the corollary that drugs and devices rejectedby appraisal are excluded from their approved copayment list?The authors also compare favourably the use by patients of self. . . [Full text of this article]