Most treatments are freely available on the NHS to anyone who needs them but sometimes we have to make choices around treatments which are exceptionally costly or where there is limited evidence of benefit.
We make these choices, using the best available evidence about the effectiveness and relative costs of different treatments.
Our Individual Funding Request Panel considers individual requests and decides whether or not to fund the requested treatment for each patient, and we have an appeals panel that considers appeals against Individual Patients Funding Panel decisions.
The NHS Medway Policy and Operating Procedure for dealing with Individual Funding Requests (IFR) describes the process for making decisions about individual funding requests for exceptional and rare cases.
Our Policy Development Group is the principal group used by NHS Medway to consider whether particular treatments should be made available to patients. It develops and reviews policies which help the organisation decide what funding priority should be given to a particular treatment or other health intervention. Recommendations are then made to the Quality Board for approval.
