Effective Use of Resources
The NHS belongs to us all. It is there to improve our health and well-being, support us to keep mentally and physically well, to get better when we are ill and, when we cannot fully recover to stay as well as we can to the end of our lives.
To make sure that we can provide the best care for the maximum number of people it is vital that we make every penny count.
This means funding treatments that have been demonstrated to work and where there is a high likelihood of benefit and a low likelihood of harm. Carrying out treatments/procedures that are not of great health benefit uses up resources that could be spent on really making a difference elsewhere.
As happens in other parts of the country, we may decide that a treatment or procedure should not be routinely funded because:
- There is only limited or no evidence of its effectiveness (i.e. whether it works or not).
- It is considered a low priority for funding, (for example, aesthetic surgery) compared to other treatments (for example, dementia or stroke care).
The Effective Use of Resources (EUR) Treatment Policies below lists those treatments/procedures that are not funded or where funding will only be made available if specific criteria are met. The Greater Manchester (GM) EUR Steering Group regularly reviews all GM EUR policies and has a programme of work to develop new GM EUR policies. This work helps to ensure that people across the whole of GM are able to access these treatments in a fair and equitable manner.
It is important to remember that while the NHS does not want to carry out treatments/procedures which have little health benefit in general, there may be overwhelming health benefits for an individual patient. In these cases, a clinician, on behalf of a patient, will explain the exceptional circumstances and request that these are considered through the GM EUR process, where it will be decided if the NHS will carry out the treatment/procedure.
The GM EUR process will make decisions on an individual case by case basis. The GM EUR process for requesting funding on an individual patient basis is detailed in the GM EUR Operational Policy below. This process is applied consistently by all Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) in GM. The Terms of Reference for our Individual Funding Request Panel can also be found below.