Patient Choice
A new way to choose and book your hospital appointment
"You have decided with your GP that you are going to see a specialist for further treatment. You can now choose where to have your treatment from a list of hospitals or clinics."
Please click on the link below for further information.
Funding for Treatment Abroad
Gloucestershire PCT will not routinely fund treatment outside the UK in recognition that:
- it is more difficult to ensure equivalent clinical standards, patient safety and performance requirements in treatment facilities falling outside direct UK Government jurisdiction
- it is more difficult to ensure patient care and follow on care with treatment facilities with which the PCT does not have an established contractual or clinical relationship
- there may be additional treatment or patient/carer travel costs which might fall to the PCT and which would generally be better used to fund direct patient care for the wider group of patients for whom the PCT has funding responsibility
- there may be additional transactional costs associated with putting in place small scale contractual arrangements with non-UK based treatment facilities, and these costs would generally be better used to fund direct patient care for the wider group of patients for whom the PCT has funding responsibility.
The PCT is entitled to refuse to authorise a request for treatment overseas that it does not fund even if that treatment is funded elsewhere in the UK.
Applications for funding for treatment within an EEA country (or Switzerland) may be considered by the PCT under the Department of Health's E112 referral scheme or Article 49 process (see www.dh.gov.uk for more details) where:
- a particular treatment is clinically justified and would otherwise be routinely funded by the PCT but where treatment in the UK could not be provided without an "undue delay" and the treatment in question is available within the treating EU member State. In determining whether there might be an "undue delay", the PCT will have regard to the patient's estimated treatment time within the NHS, an objective assessment of the patient's personal circumstances and treatment needs (and if appropriate other, non-clinical circumstances), the probable course of the patient's illness and, if appropriate, the level of pain or disability of the patient.
and / or
- where a particular treatment is justified and would otherwise be routinely funded by the PCT, and there is clinical consensus (usually from local NHS consultants) that due to the patient's specific clinical circumstances, sufficient clinical expertise to provide the intervention concerned would only be available outside the UK and that the treatment is available under the proposed treating country's health insurance scheme.
The PCT will not provide funding other than where prior approval has been sought, and confirmed, by the PCT and the Department of Health ahead of treatment commencing. The PCT strongly recommends that treatment is not undertaken without written funding approval.
