Tag Archives: britain

Policy Updates

British National Health Service Stops Paying for Lifesaving Drugs

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Variety of Medicine in Pill BottlesBritain’s government-monopoly (single-payer) health plan, the National Health Service (NHS) has announced plans to stop paying for the most innovative, lifesaving drugs:

More than 5,000 cancer patients will be denied life-extending drugs under plans which charities say are a “dreadful” step backwards for the NHS.

Health officials have just announced sweeping restrictions on treatment, which will mean patients with breast, bowel, skin and pancreatic cancer will no longer be able to receive drugs funded by the NHS.

In total, 17 cancer drugs for 25 different indications will no longer be paid for in future.

Charities said the direction the health service was heading in could set progress back by centuries.

The Cancer Drugs Fund was launched in 2011, following a manifesto pledge by David Cameron, who said patients should no longer be denied drugs on cost grounds.

Drugs which will no longer be funded include Kadcyla for advanced breast cancer, Avastin for many bowel and breast cancer patients, Revlimid and Imnovid for multiple myeloma, and Abraxane, the first treatment for pancreatic cancer in 17 years.

(Laura Donnelly, “Thousands of Cancer Patients to be Denied Treatment,” The Telegraph, September 4, 2015)

This is the second round of cuts this year. All in all, reimbursement for 25 drugs used by about 8,000 patients has been cut off. Unfortunately, this is not surprising. Continue reading British National Health Service Stops Paying for Lifesaving Drugs →

Health Care Costs

Worrisome Lessons from Britain

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Paying for private consultation has cost Jenny Whitehead her place on the National Health Service (NHS) surgical waiting list. A NHS spokesman said that “Anyone who chooses to pay for a private outpatient consultation cannot receive NHS treatment unless they are then referred on to an NHS pathway by their consultant.”

In 2008, the NHS tried to deny all care to cancer patients who paid for drugs not offered by the health service. The government said that it had ordered the NHS to stop withdrawing care from people who paid privately for unobtainable drugs or treatments.

Continue reading Worrisome Lessons from Britain →

Health Care Costs

How Comparative Effectiveness Works in Britain

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A new report from the Rarer Cancers Forum suggests that 16,000 people in the United Kingdom have been denied cancer drugs by Great Britain’s government-controlled National Health Service (NHS). Key findings:

  • Although progress has been made in gaining access to treatment, with 8,750 more patients being given vital treatment, 16,000 have still been denied access to treatments that they may need.
  • The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) needs to improve drug assessment time periods — with the Institute taking 21 months to appraise new cancer drugs, rather than the 6 months promised by ministers.

Additional findings:

  • 36 percent of patients cannot find their Primary Care Trusts (PCT’s) cancer procedures and policies on PCT Websites.
  • 49 percent of patients were unclear about how quickly they would hear a decision on a request for treatment.
Health Care Costs

A Tale of Two Scandals

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British Scandal: According to Britain’s Independent, the recently released report on Stafford General has ignited the “worst hospital scandal in more than a decade.”

For years, Stafford “routinely neglected” patients. The taxpayer supported management focused on financial targets rather than patient welfare. According to the Guardian, the hospital was understaffed. Clinical decision units (CDUs), areas within a hospital for patients who require further observation and assessment before a treatment or discharge plan can be developed, were used as “dumping grounds to avoid breaching the four-hour target for being treated in [the emergency room].” The Healthcare Commission reported that Stafford dumped “quite unwell” patients into its CDUs “without a dedicated nurse to look after them” just before it reached the 4 hour target, and that its smaller CDU was not even staffed.

The Telegraph reports that basic hygiene was neglected, receptionists triaged casualty arrivals, and thirsty patients resorted to drinking from flower vases. When hospital management was given notice of a “damning inspection report,” they “responded by hiring a public relations team and promised to ‘get MPs [Members of Parliament] on [their] side.’”

Continue reading A Tale of Two Scandals →

New Health Care Law

British Cancer Care Varies by Social Class

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Analysis of hospitals admissions for breast, colon and lung cancer illustrates that people from low-income areas are more likely to be admitted as emergencies; and less likely to receive surgical intervention.

  • Patients in the top fifth most-affluent areas are 12% more likely to receive surgery for rectal cancer than the poorest regions.
  • Women in the top-fifth most-affluent areas are 18% more likely to receive surgery for breast cancer than the poorest regions.
Science and Other News

After Following the British Lead on Health Care, Will We Follow Their Energy Policies as Well?

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Hard-up pensioners have resorted to buying books from charity shops and burning them to keep warm. Volunteers have reported that “a large number” of elderly customers are snapping up hardbacks as cheap fuel for their fires and stoves. Temperatures this week are forecast to plummet as low as -13ºC in the Scottish Highlands, with the mercury falling to -6ºC in London, -5ºC in Birmingham and -7ºC in Manchester as one of the coldest winters in years continues to bite.

One assistant said: “Book burning seems terribly wrong but we have to get rid of unsold stock for pennies and some of the pensioners say the books make ideal slow-burning fuel for fires and stoves. A lot of them buy up large hardback volumes so they can stick them in the fire to last all night.”

Full report on British pensioners burning books to stay warm.

book-burning

Health Care Costs

This Debate Needs More Adult Supervision

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Here is Joe Flower, writing at The Health Care Blog:

The forthcoming fight for real change in healthcare: It will be viciousness at the top of the lungs.  It will be a scorched-earth campaign.  Its main weapon will be fear. It will be unencumbered by any actual knowledge, subtlety, awareness of history, or access to the thoughts of people who actually know what they are talking about.  Its fury will be unloaded not just in service of narrow and inflexible political nostrums, but in the service of sectors of the industry which fear that a truly efficient and effective healthcare system would cripple their profit margins. The fulminating rages across Rush Limbaugh’s radio rants, Matt Drudge’s blog, the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, and commentaries issued by conservative think tanks, all echoed around the blogosphere.

And what, you may ask, provoked this hysterical diatribe? It was Flower’s reaction to his perceived conservative reaction to $1.1 billion in the stimulus package for “comparative effectiveness research.” I’ll explain why he is wrong below the fold. Continue reading This Debate Needs More Adult Supervision →

Physicians

The Telephone: It Rations Care and Saves the Planet at the Same Time

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In the United States, the telephone is seen as a way to expand doctor services. In Britain, it is being viewed as a device for rationing services. Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) has lots of employees and a severe shortage of physicians.[link, link, and link] The shortage has been exacerbated by a government recruitment program which hires only once a year, even though physicians leave the Service year round. The shortage is likely to get worse thanks to a new European Working Time directive that will cut the physician work week to 48 hours. [link]

The solution: telephone consultations. If doctors don’t have to spend time seeing patients, each physician can treat more patients. Moreover, the NHS Sustainable Development Unit has discovered that trips to the doctor leave an inevitable carbon footprint. So patients will, as the Telegraph puts it, “… be encouraged to stay at home and consult their doctor by phone instead of traveling to GPs’ surgeries under plans for a “greener” NHS.” [link]

Health Insurance

In Britain Health Care Is a Right; If You’re a Foreigner, That Is

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British FlagUntil recently, hospitals in the British National Health Service told patients that if they paid privately for effective cancer drugs their NHS care would be withdrawn. Yet those same institutions have been quietly selling donated organs to foreigners. Patients from Greece, Cyprus, Libya, the UAR, Israel, and China have received transplants at NHS hospitals. Jumping the queue for a liver transplant costs about £75,000.  [link]

The proceeds are split between the transplant surgeon and the hospital trust. The hospitals doing the transplants say that European law requires that non-UK EU patients have as much right to UK livers as British citizens. [link] Other reports say that while European law gives patients the right to seek treatment in other member states, it is up to individual NHS hospital trusts to decide whether they will offer a transplant.