Homeopathic remedies will no longer be available on prescription on the NHS according to newly-announced plans.
The move comes as part of the NHS England’s drive to save more than £190m a year through a new set of national guidelines, which are now open for public consultation.
According to the draft consultation, prescriptions for homeopathic treatments cost NHS England £92,412 in 2016, and at least £578,000 over the past five years.
Announcing the plans, Simon Stevens, NHS England’s chief executive, said homeopathy is “at best a placebo and a misuse of scarce NHS funds”.
Besides homeopathy, the plans highlight 17 other items that will no longer be available on prescription for reasons ranging from low clinical effectiveness to low cost-effectiveness. These include herbal medicines, Omega-3 fatty acid compounds, rubs and ointments used to relieve muscle pain known as rubefacients, and travel vaccines including hepatitis B, yellow fever and rabies that are not available on the NHS for travel, but are sometimes erroneously given.
The public funding of homeopathic remedies has long been controversial, with both the British Medical Association and the House of Commons’ science and technology committee having called for an end to their prescription on NHS, pointing out that such remedies are merely placebos.
The new guidelines were welcomed by experts.
“Homeopathy is based on implausible assumptions and the most reliable evidence fails to show that it works beyond a placebo effect. It can cause severe harm when used as an alternative to effective treatments,” said Edzard Ernst, emeritus professor of complementary medicine at the University of Exeter. “Therefore, it is high time that the NHS stops funding it and instead employs our scarce resources on treatments that are backed by sound science.”
The view was echoed by Michael Marshall, project director of the Good Thinking Society, an organisation that previously threatened the Department of Health with a judicial review if it failed to put complementary and alternative therapies on the blacklist for prescriptions.
“This is very welcome news,” said Marshall. “Every credible medical body certainly knows that homeopathic remedies are just not effective for any conditions at all and it is great to see this strong statement from NHS England officially acknowledging the fact.”
Sir Bruce Keogh, medical director of NHS England, said that an honest conversation about public funding of drugs was needed. “We need to end unnecessary expense to give us a bigger therapeutic bang for the NHS buck, so we cut the fat and build the therapeutic muscle,” he said.
A spokeswoman for the BMA said the organisation “believes there should be no further NHS funding for homeopathy” adding that “limited and scarce NHS resources should only be used to support medicines and treatment that have been shown to be effective.”
But Cristal Sumner, chief executive of the British Homeopathic Association said the NHS plans were “bad for its already overstretched budget and for patients” and criticised the report used to draw up the new guidelines.
“This recommendation is not cost effective as patients will be prescribed more expensive conventional drugs in place of homeopathy, which defeats the object of the exercise,” she said.
Meanwhile, NHS England has been accused of introducing “ability to pay” through the back door by forcing patients to pay for other products it claims are “ineffective, over-priced and low value”, instead of giving prescriptions for them.
Health charities claim the NHS is abandoning the historic principle that people who need care should not have to pay.
The charge has been made today by National Voices, an umbrella group that represents 140 health and care charities including the British Heart Foundation, Parkinson’s UK and Arthritis Care.
It was responding to NHS England’s announcement that it wants to cut its drugs bill by several hundred million pounds by no longer issuing prescriptions for cough mixture, cold treatments, eye drops, laxatives and sun cream – products that are available over the counter. NHS bosses want those in need to pay for such medications themselves.
“There are many patients who would be unable to afford the remedies over the counter – for example people who are exempt from prescription charges such as the under-16s, people living with cancer, pregnant women and those on low incomes”, said Don Redding, National Voices’ director of policy.
“Stopping such prescriptions would be tantamount to introducing ‘ability to pay’ as a barrier to accessing the treatments people need. This breaks with the principle of ‘free at the point of use’ guaranteed by the NHS constitution.”
The NHS constitution states that: “Access to NHS services is based on clinical need, not an individual’s ability to pay; NHS services are free of charge, except in limited circumstances sanctioned by parliament.”
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