NHS staff should influence topics chosen for NICE appraisal
NHS staff should have greater influence over the choice of medicines appraised by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence, academics suggested last week.
The selection process should also consider prescribing data to assess
which treatments generate the most expenditure and also to help estimate
the financial burden of common procedures, they recommend.
And it would be of more value if NICE also looked at the contribution
that therapies made to health equality, not just whether they were cost
or clinically effective, they add. NICE should also consider the benefits
of withdrawing existing ineffective or inefficient therapies.
Writing in the BMJ (2004;329:227) the researchers accused NICE of creating
inflationary pressure that the NHS cannot afford.
If the organisation was given a real budget it would be forced to examine
the effects of its decisions on the whole of the NHS, the researchers
from the department of health sciences at the University of York and
the department of primary care and general practice at the University
of Birmingham claimed. |
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