Exceptional Treatment Requests
Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) such as Bexley, Bromley, Greenwich, Lambeth, Southwark and Lewisham in the South East London sector make decisions on how healthcare is provided to local people. This includes new drugs, treatments and health technologies that currently fall outside the existing commissioning arrangements, contracts and service level agreements (SLAs) entered into by the PCTs.
There may be instances where an individual patient’s needs cannot be met through current care pathways and services. The PCTs have therefore developed and agreed an individual funding (or exceptional treatment) request process to consider a referral for treatment or a diagnostic procedure that falls outside of usual health services.
A request for individual funding for treatment can be made by an NHS clinician (your GP and/or consultant) on behalf of anyone registered with a Bexley, Bromley, Greenwich, Lambeth, Southwark or Lewisham GP.
The PCTs will pursue the approach to commissioning healthcare services for their residents in line with current government policy. This means offering a wide range of services to the community, fairly and equally according to what is needed. The PCT’s of the South East London Sector have agreed to abide by the London Wide Commissioning Intentions and Business Rules of London Primary Care Trusts for Acute Services 2009-2020 which states:
“In order for funding to be agreed as an individual funding request there must be some unusual or unique clinical factor about the patient that suggests that they are:
- significantly different to the general population of patients with the condition in question
- likely to gain significantly more benefit from the intervention than might be expected from the average patient with the condition".
Our job is to provide the best healthcare to the largest number of people in Bexley and to stay within the budget set by Government. To do this we give a higher priority to treatments that are known to offer the most effective health benefits to patients in the most cost effective way. Legally PCT’s are not obliged to provide every treatment that a patient or a group of patients may request. We therefore develop policies to prioritise treatments based on the resources that we have available to us.
Treatment in another European Union country
If you wish to apply for treatment in another EEA country, you can download the Trust's application form and policy for overseas treatment requests via the right hand links.
