Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that clinicians making Individual Funding Requestsfor the prescription of Duodopa to people with Parkinson's are informed of the outcome within 40 days.

From April 2013, NHS England assumed responsibility for commissioning adult specialist neurosciences services, including the majority of services for patients with Parkinson's disease, with some being the responsibility of clinical commissioning groups.

NHS England has advised that it does not routinely fund Duodopa (co-careldopa) for the treatment of Parkinson's disease. Clinicians can submit individual funding requests for this treatment on behalf of their patients as per NHS England's individual funding requests standard operating procedure, which is at:

www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/cp-04.pdf

NHS England has advised that its individual funding request process is monitored against the standard operating procedure to ensure that referring clinicians are informed of outcomes in a timely manner.