Individual funding Review for private medication (FOI)

Request

A

Please could you provide information on the Individual Funding Review process for accessing private medication / procedures, including how to apply and the eligibility requirements.

B

How many applications for Individual Funding Reviews have been submitted and how many have been approved per year since 2015 and if available, what treatments were they for?

Response

A

Information is not held. There is no specific Individual Funding Review (IFR) process for access to private healthcare as the patient or insurance company pay the costs. The only IFR process that is in place is for access to treatments which are not routinely funded at public expense and which the Consultant making the application is seeking approval for on an exceptional basis.

B

Information is not held centrally for the period 2015 to September 2019. This information was previously held by the Chair of the Drugs and Therapeutics Committee (DTC) when DTC considered applications, or by the Medical Director when applications were considered by the Clinical Directors from 2015 to 2019. To answer this, the data would need to be extracted from various sources and manipulated, aside from taking more than the prescribed 12.5 hours to do that work, the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 does not require a Scheduled Public Authority to manipulate data in order to provide a response. Article 16 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has therefore been applied.

Available information is as follows

The Department has determined that due to the low number of applications, to provide any further information in respect of the reason for the application would likely breach the privacy of the individuals. Article 25 (Personal Information) of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has therefore been applied.

Articles applied

Article 16 A scheduled public authority may refuse to supply information if cost excessive

(1) A scheduled public authority that has been requested to supply information may refuse to supply the information if it estimates that the cost of doing so would exceed an amount determined in the manner prescribed by Regulations.

Regulation 2 (1) of the Freedom of Information (Costs) (Jersey) Regulations 2014 allows an authority to refuse a request for information where the estimated cost of dealing with the request would exceed the specified amount of the cost limit of £500. This is the estimated cost of one person spending 12.5 working hours in determining whether the department holds the information, locating, retrieving and extracting the information.

Article 25 Personal information

(1) Information is absolutely exempt information if it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2018.

(2) Information is absolutely exempt information if –

(a) it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is not the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2018; and

(b) its supply to a member of the public would contravene any of the data protection principles, as defined in that Law.