NHS to overhaul treatment costs for research studies

NHS England will introduce a standardised system in April 2019 to determine how excess treatment costs for research studies are managed across the country, it has said.

Over the next five months, the National Institute for Health Research will develop a process for managing the extra costs to the NHS of treating patients through research studies, compared with standard treatment. At the moment, there is considerable geographical variation in this process, which can be extremely complex, leading to disagreements over whether the NHS or researchers should fund these costs.

The process will put the NIHR’s 15 local Clinical Research Networks in charge of managing these costs, NHS England said in a response to a public consultation on 4 May.