About Individual Patient Funding Requests (IPFR)
Every year, the Cardiff and Vale UHB receives money from the Welsh Government to pay for healthcare for everyone who lives in Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan and is entitled to NHS care. Our job is to get the best value for this money by spending it wisely on your behalf.
Demand for healthcare is growing. New and often expensive treatments are becoming available almost every week. Our priority is to pay for those treatments that are clinically effective, can demonstrate that they improve people’s health and offer good value for money.
As a result, there are some treatments that we do not routinely provide and these fall into 2 main categories:
- treatments that are new, novel, developing or unproven and are not normally available for any patients in Cardiff and Vale (for example, a medicine that has not been approved for use by the NHS in Wales);
- treatments that are provided by us in very specific clinical circumstances and not all patients with the condition meet these criteria (for example, a request for varicose vein treatment).
Your GP or Hospital Consultant can ask us, on your behalf, to fund a treatment that we would not normally provide for you. This is called making an Individual Patient Funding Request or ‘IPFR’ and NHS Wales follows a clear policy on how to make decisions on these requests. You can download this policy – and a leaflet explaining it – below.
Useful documents:
NHS Wales Making Decisions on Individual Patient Funding Requests Policy IPFR- NHS Wales Making Decisions on Individual Patient Funding Requests Policy IPFR (Cymraeg)
- NHS Wales Patient Leaflet About Individual Patient Funding Requests
- NHS Wales Patient Leaflet About Individual Patient Funding Requests (Cymraeg)
- NHS Wales Application Form for Making an IPFR
- NHS Wales Request for a Review of a Decision Form
- NHS Wales Policy Equality Impact Assessment and Feedback
- IPFR Decisions to July 2012
Making a Request for Treatment in the European Economic Area (EEA)
Under the European Treaty, in certain circumstances NHS patients are legally entitled to make a request for treatment in another EEA country, if they would be entitled to that same treatment from NHS Wales. Patients are able either to (a) seek prior authorisation for their treatment before it is carried out and then reimbursement of its costs afterwards or (b) to make a retrospective claim for reimbursement. This is not the same as making an IPFR as it is covered under different legislation and a different procedure. However, these requests will also be processed by the UHB’s IPFR Team.
Useful documents
- NHS Wales Procedure for Treatment in the European Economic Area
- NHS Wales Application Form for Prior Authorisation for Treatment
- NHS Wales Completion of Treatment Form
- Patient Leaflet About Planning Treatment in the European Economic Area.
Who you can Contact for More Information?
Questions about your treatment
The best person to talk to about your healthcare and whether you should be making an IPFR or a request for treatment in the EEA is your GP or Hospital Consultant.
Questions about the request process
The UHB’s IPFR Team will be pleased to help you – you can contact them on 02920 350661 or 350612. Please note that they will not be able to discuss your healthcare as they are not clinically trained but they will be able to talk you through how a request for treatment can be made and how it will be considered.
