THE care of seriously ill patients could be put at risk by moves to allow people to "top-up" their NHS treatment with drugs paid for privately, MPs warned yesterday.
Both England and Scotland have issued new guidance which could allow so-called "co-payments" or top-ups without patients having their free NHS care withdrawn.
Yesterday, the Commons health committee said patient care could be disrupted by the ne
ed to remove them from general wards to special areas to have their privately-paid-for treatment.
But the MPs admitted the new system was the only realistic way forward. It follows concern that, in some areas, patients were being allowed to pay for extra drugs – those not approved for NHS use – without their normal NHS treatment being affected.
However, other patients who wanted to top-up their care were then forced to pay for the services which would normally be free on the NHS because of a rule banning people from being both NHS and private patients during the same course of treatment.
The majority of cases have involved expensive cancer drugs, which medicines watchdogs such as the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence and the Scottish Medicines Consortium have said are not cost-effective enough to be recommended for use across the NHS.
New guidance says that co-payments should be allowed but those wishing to pay for drugs should receive them at a "different time and in a different place" which could include a designated part of an NHS hospital.
Yesterday, the health committee said despite genuine concerns that the new system could create a two-tier health system and be difficult to put into practice, it was the only way the system could go forward.
But they added: "We believe it would be wrong for very seriously ill patients to be moved from an NHS ward to a different location so as to administer a privately paid for drug separately."
"This undoubted disruption to a person's quality of life just to meet some bureaucratic requirement would not only endanger the patient's care but would be unjust.
"There is also a danger under the proposed arrangements that two patients with the same condition on the same NHS ward might receive different treatments because one patient could afford it and the other could not."
A Scottish Government spokeswoman said last night that there was no change to their guidance they issued on co-payments in March.
"That guidance made clear that where a patient chooses to pay for part of their care privately and measures are taken to make sure that care is delivered appropriately, they should not lose out on their NHS care," she said.
Mike Hobday, head of policy at Macmillan Cancer Support, said: "The real issue was always how to make new, life-extending drugs available on the NHS to cancer patients who need them."
He added: "It was, and still is, right to recognise that the proper solution is to reform the system that didn't allow these drugs in the NHS in the first place."
The full article contains 523 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
