Head of Cancer Drugs Fund regrets its establishment, conference hears

The chairman of England’s Cancer Drugs Fund does not believe that it should have been set up and regrets that it has undermined the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). So why did he take the job? “I got involved to sort it out,” Peter Clark, a consultant in oncology from Clatterbridge Centre for Oncology in northwest England, told a Westminster Health Forum seminar in London on 15 January.

“Did I agree to it being set up? No,” he said. “And I regret it’s undermined NICE. But the first reason I wanted to get involved was that patients in the north of England were then only half as likely to get access to cancer drugs that hadn’t been approved by NICE as those in …