Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to NHS England’s medicines optimisation CQUIN scheme, how NHS England calculates best value; and what the percentage importance is that NHS England applies in its scoring to the (a) cost, (b) efficacy and (c) safety of treatments when making that calculation.

Medicines Optimisation Commissioning for Quality and Innovation (CQUIN) requires trusts to adopt best value generic/biologic products in 90% of new patients within one quarter of guidance being made available and best value generic/biologic products in 80% of applicable existing patients within one year of guidance being made available (except if standard treatment course is less than six months). Further information is attached.

NHS England does not calculate best value. Best value is as defined within the commissioning framework and decisions about which product to use are made first on the basis of clinical judgement for individual patients and secondly on the basis of the overall value proposition offered by individual medicines. If more than one treatment is suitable, the best value biological medicine, including biosimilars, should be chosen taking into account transparently costed device training, any patient support programs offered by manufacturers, administration costs, dosage and price per dose.

The medicines are all licensed and therefore have been demonstrated to be safe and effective by the regulatory authorities.