NICE and National Level Decision Making

Question 1

when was NICE established?

Answer 1

1999

Question 2

who make up the greatest proportion of the NICE Appraisal Committees?

Answer 2

-people of the medical field e.g. GP, physician, surgeon

• others are (from greatest to least proportion:
• other clinical.g. nurse, pharmacist
• methodologists e.g. health economist, statistician
• managers
• lay member
• manufacturer

Question 3

what is the cancer drugs fund?

Answer 3

special fund for cancer drugs as a means of bypassing NICE technology appraisal criteria and giving speedier access - NICE doesn’t allow all cancer drugs on NHS as often very expensive, but people perceive cancer as more important than other conditions > fund

*the fund has become unsustainable financially however so new fast-track appraisal system with a fixed budget of £340 million introduced that still makes it easier to get drugs than through NICE

Question 4

What other national decision-making bodies are there apart from NICE?

Answer 4

• national screening programme

- cancer drugs fund

Question 5

What is the NICE Technological Appraisal Programme?

Answer 5

• covers decisions based on explicit criteria
• informed by independent assessment of interventions including COST EFFECTIVE ANALYSIS
• they get submissions for the technology sponsors and other expert bodies
• submission of topics to discuss should be varied - a mix of old and new technologies but in practice, tends to be mainly new expensive drugs which are appraised

Question 6

What is the Centre of Public Health?

Answer 6

• part of NICE
• deals with public health issues
• multiple public health advisory committees (PHACs) made up of core members, topic expert members, community members
• use cost/QALY model

Question 7

ah fuck it

Answer 7

read the handout if you want to learn about the rest of this bullshit although there’s not much left imo

Question 8

List the screening criteria by the NSC for whether or not to implement screening programmes.

Answer 8

• condition should be an important health problem
• should be an accepted treatment for patients with disease
• facilities for diagnosis and treatment should be available
• should be a recognisable latent or early symptomatic stage of disease
• should be a suitable test or examination
• natural history of disease should be adequately understood
• should be an agreed policy on who to treat as patients
• cost of case-finding should be economically balanced in relation to expenditure on medical care as a whole
• case-finding should be a continuing process and not a ‘once for all’ project - i.e. screening test should not just be used once for whole population but should be used throughout future healthcare