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Every year we receive an NHS budget allocated to us by the Welsh Government to pay for our local population’s health services.
In addition, the Welsh Health Specialised Services Committee (WHSSC) plan and provide specialised and tertiary services on behalf of Health Board in Wales to reduce duplication and ensure consistency.
Unfortunately the demand for NHS services is always greater than the money available, so we have to prioritise the use of funds carefully as it is not possible to fund every available treatment.
Whilst the majority of treatment and services that patients need are offered routinely on the NHS, there may be some cases where a decision has been taken not to routinely provide the treatment. This may be because there is limited evidence for how well the treatment works in those patients or because the treatment is very expensive and doesn’t offer good value for money for the NHS.
There will also be instances where a treatment is still very new and a decision hasn’t been taken yet on whether it should be offered routinely on the NHS in Wales. Your GP or hospital consultant can ask us, on your behalf, to fund a treatment that we would not normally provide for you on the NHS in Wales. The NHS Wales Policy, Making Decisions on Individual Patient Funding Requests (IPFR), clearly sets out how these requests are dealt with, and how an application can be made: