UK NHS trusts denying patients expensive drugs via 'red lists'

In a bid to cut budgets, National Health Service (NHS) managers in the UK are preventing family doctors from prescribing drugs for conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, Parkinson’s disease and osteoporosis, adding the medicines to so-called "red lists," which means they can only be prescribed by a hospital consultant and not a General Practitioner.

It also means that many patients find it more difficult to obtain the most effective drugs free on the NHS, even though they have been approved by the medicines rationing watchdog the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE).

Patients' groups described the disclosure as "outrageous" and "extremely worrying," reports the Daily Telegraph newspaper, noting that one health authority has added 32 drugs to its red list in the past year, while another said it intended to fine doctors who wrote letters requesting that such medicines be prescribed.