UK's value-based pricing system plans lack clarity, MPs find

The UK government’s plans to overhaul the National Health Service pricing system for new drugs are poorly explained, leaving clinicians, patients and the drug industry in the dark over how the changes will work, according to a highly critical report released yesterday by Members of Parliament sitting on the House of Commons health select committee. They said it was “unacceptable” that proposed value-based pricing changes were still not explained despite government plans to implement the measures in less than 12 months.

A number of key decisions need to be taken swiftly in order to ensure a smooth change-over to a new system of pricing for the drugs used by the NHS the Health Committee reported, following an inquiry into the work of the health watchdog the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE). It also urges greater openness about the results of clinical drug trials, and welcomes the new role that NICE will have from April this year in producing guidance for the social care sector.

The Committee is highly critical of the delay in setting out precisely what a value-based pricing system for drugs entails. Given that the government opened its consultation on the issue in December 2010, the Committee says that it is unacceptable that the arrangements for value-based pricing have still not been settled and that those who will have to work with those arrangements are still unclear about what value-based pricing will mean in practice. The MPs call for decisions to be taken no later than the end of March this year.