June 4, 2010
The multiple sclerosis risk sharing scheme is "a costly failure" and should not be continued, according to researchers in the British Medical Journal today.
They argue that the biggest losers are the other NHS patients who would otherwise have benefited from the money spent on the scheme, estimated to be around £50m per year since it was set up in 2002.
They also point out that, if an assessment had been completed after the first two years, the NHS could have already saved around £250m.
The risk sharing scheme was set up by the Department of Health to make sure disease-modifying drugs were available on the NHS after the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) ruled that they were not cost effective.
Under the terms of the scheme, the government agreed to provide these drugs on the NHS while research was carried out to assess their long term cost effectiveness. The NHS would then gradually stop paying for the drugs if patients did not appear to be benefiting.
In 2009, seven years after the scheme was set up, the first analysis of the data showed that patient outcomes were much worse than predicted, but the scheme's scientific advisory group judged that it was premature to reduce prices without further analysis.
Why did this happen and what can we do to prevent it recurring?
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