Trusts will not be able to exclude drugs approved by NICE from formularies, says Lansley

Patients should take legal action over “illegal” refusals by NHS healthcare providers to fund treatments approved by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), the institute’s chairman, Sir Michael Rawlins, has suggested.

“I would love one of the patient groups to take a trust to judicial review,” Professor Rawlins told the BMJ. “Then it would send a signal out to everybody else.”

NICE, set up to tackle the “postcode lottery” in NHS funding for treatments, assesses new drugs and other treatments for clinical efficacy and cost effectiveness. Trusts …