LOW PRIORITY FUNDING for hospital care

The Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire West (BOB) integrated care board suggest
“To make sure that the NHS can provide the best care for the maximum number of people it is vital that every penny is spent wisely. This means only funding treatments that have been demonstrated to work and where there is also a high likelihood of benefit for as many people as possible and a low likelihood of harm. We always must bear in mind that carrying out treatment that is not of great health benefit uses up resources that could be spent on really making a difference elsewhere.

We may decide that a treatment or procedure should not be routinely funded because:

• There is only limited or no evidence of its effectiveness (whether it works or not)
• It is considered a low priority for funding, (for example, cosmetic surgery) compared to other treatments”
  Clinical Commissioning Policy Statements & IFRs | BOB ICB

Searching for treatments which usually will not be funded

There are 180 treatments, covered in commissioning policy statements, which will not usually be funded on the NHS, many of these relate to hospital care.

You can access the commissioning policy statements in two ways

• Indirectly from the Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire West (BOB) integrated care board, which divides up the policy statements into categories
  Clinical Commissioning Policy Statements & IFRs | BOB ICB
• Directly from the NHS South, Central and West (NHS SCW) policies and application forms page for Buckinghamshire
  Policies and Application forms – Buckinghamshire – Clinical Policy Implementation Service

Then as NHS South, Central and West (NHS SCW) suggest to search for a commissioning policy statement
Use the search box and “Type a word associated with the intervention you require and a limited list of policies and forms to be displayed. For example Assisted Conception would be displayed if any of the following is typed Assisted, Conception, IVF.”

If funding is to be considered then an Individual Funding Request (IFR) is required
An IFR is an application to fund healthcare that is not usually funded by the NHS. These requests are considered by an IFR Panel which considers evidence of clinical and cost-effectiveness, as well as equity for the whole population.

Finding the criteria
The criteria for funding are usually found in the “IFR application form “or similar form for each condition in the column for “process pathway“ in the table.

Unless the strict criteria are met then funding is not likely to be approved. The IFR committee does not meet often so there is generally a time delay before a funding decision is made. This is all explained further in the frequently asked questions about individual funding requests which are worth reading, see below.

Further information

Some common treatments which will usually not be funded are included below, as well as some frequently asked questions about “individual funding requests – IFR”