A study looking at access to cancer drugs across England (ACT)

Cancer type:

Bowel (colorectal) cancer

Colon cancer

Prostate cancer

Rectal cancer

Status:

Results

Phase:

Other

This study wanted to find out what people thought about the availability of cancer drugs in the UK. It looked at cancer drugs that were new at the time of this study.

This results summary describes the interviews that the study team did with cancer patients and cancer doctors. The interviews were part of the larger study. This larger study collected information and figures about the prescribing of cancer drugs in England.

This study was open for people to join between 2013 and 2014. The team published the results in 2019.

More about this trial

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is an independent organisation. It decides which drugs and treatments are available on the National Health Service (NHS) in England.

A doctor might think that their patient would benefit from a drug or treatment that has not yet been assessed by NICE. And this drug or treatment isn't yet available on the NHS. In April 2011, the Government set up the Cancer Drugs Fund for people who live in England.

When this trial was done, doctors could apply to the Cancer Drugs Fund on behalf of their patients. They could ask for funding for a drug on the national list of drugs or another drug that was not on the list.

As part of this study, the researchers interviewed people with prostate cancer or bowel cancer.

The main aims of the interviews were to find out what:

people think about getting treatment through the Cancer Drugs Fund
cancer doctors think about the Cancer Drugs Fund

Summary of results

These are the results from interviews that the study team did with patients and cancer doctors. The team interviewed:

19 people with prostate cancer or bowel cancer. They all had cancer that couldn’t be treated with the aim to cure.
16 cancer doctors and palliative care doctors. They had all accessed drugs from the Cancer Drugs Fund to treat their patients.

The main findings from the interviews were:

most patients and doctors were grateful to have the drugs from the Cancer Drugs Fund
some of the patients felt guilty that they were able to access treatment through the Cancer Drugs Fund. This was because people with other medical conditions couldn’t access treatment in a similar way.
some of the doctors were concerned that there was a fund solely for cancer drugs but not for other health conditions
most patients and doctors said that having a good quality of life at the end of life was more important than increasing the length of time people lived
a few thought that increasing the length of time people lived at the end of life was more important than quality of life

Conclusion
In this small study, the team found that patients and cancer doctors appreciated the Cancer Drug Fund. But most were worried about how fair it was to have a fund for drugs that only cancer patients had access to.

More detailed information
There is more information about this research in the reference below.

Please note, the information we link to here is not in plain English. It has been written for healthcare professionals and researchers.

What's fair to an individual is not always fair to a population": A qualitative study of patients and their health professionals using the Cancer Drugs Fund.
C Chamberlain and others
Health Policy, 2019, Volume 123, Issue 8, pages 706-712.

Where this information comes from
We have based this summary on the information in the article above. This has been reviewed by independent specialists (peer reviewed Open a glossary item ) and published in a medical journal. We have not analysed the data ourselves. As far as we are aware, the link we list above is active and the article is free and available to view.