Medicine 'top up' plan unveiled

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Health Secretary Alan Johnson also pledged to speed up the process of approving new drugs for use on the NHS with the aim of minimising the numbers forced to pay for treatment.

The widely-trailed new package of measures, which overturns the ban on patients paying for drugs while accessing NHS care, is designed to clearly separate private care from that provided by the NHS.

Patients wishing to pay for drugs will receive them at a "different time and in a different place" to where they go for their NHS care, the report said. This "different place" could be in the building of a private company or part of an NHS hospital which has been designated for private treatments.

Patients will pay not only for the drug, but any cost over and above what would have been provided for on the NHS, including any scans or tests associated with the treatment, staff costs of administering the drug, follow-up care and the cost of any NHS equipment used for private purposes.

Primary care trusts (PCTs) in each region will determine how much to charge patients for these services although the NHS "should not be seen to be profiting unreasonably" from patients, the report said.

Cancer tsar Professor Mike Richards compiled the list of 14 recommendations, which have been accepted by the Government in full.

The recommendations include steps to allow the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) "greater flexibility" in approving more expensive drugs for terminally ill patients. Nice will therefore get greater scope to approve drugs that are very expensive but which nevertheless offer benefit to patients.

Mr Johnson said the move would not breach the founding principles of the NHS, and he denied the move would damage the NHS, saying most people thought the present situation was cruel.

"What will damage the NHS is if we carry on with what's seen by the majority of people as a cruel procedure. What this will mean is that people do not see the NHS, when they are at their most vulnerable, as an institution which puts cruelty above care."