An Individual Funding Request
(IFR) is a request to fund, for an individual patient, an intervention or
treatment that falls outside existing contracts and commissioning arrangements.
This request must be made by an NHS funded clinician (GP, consultant or equivalent
autonomous practitioner) who is responsible for overseeing the requested
treatment.
Funding requests can be made on
the basis of exceptionality – where the patient is suffering from a presenting
medical condition for which the CCG has a policy but where the requested
treatment has not been agreed to be funded under the policy or rarity and the
patient would gain more clinical benefit from the treatment from other with the
same diagnosis, or rarity – where a patient has a very rare clinical condition
and no commissioning policy exists because the low probability of the condition
occurring among the CCG’s population means that an explicit policy is not
warranted.
An individual funding request
can be made by the clinician treating you if they believe that because your
clinical circumstances are exceptional, you may receive benefit from a
treatment or service that isn’t routinely offered by the NHS.
When can an individual
funding request be made?
An individual funding request
can be made for a treatment that is not routinely offered by the NHS:
- when your clinician believes that your clinical circumstances are clearly different to other patients with the same condition, and
- when there is a reason why you would respond differently to other patients - and therefore gain more clinical benefit from the treatment
How do I apply for an IFR?
An NHS Clinician, such as your
GP or specialist Consultant (NHS) will need to make an application online on
your behalf via a web based portal called Blueteq. Applications are not
accepted from individuals.
What is the Process?
The application is made
online. For most procedures there is a criteria that needs to be
met. If your circumstances does not meet with the criteria, then the
clinician doing your application will need to provide evidence that your
circumstances are clinically exceptional or rare. It is the responsibility of
the clinical applicant to submit all the necessary information and to make the
case for exceptionality or rarity.
Once the application is
completed, a triage group will review the application and all the information
submitted. This is done weekly, to ensure that funding requests are
responded to as quickly as possible. The role of triage is to establish if the
application makes a possible case for clinical exceptionality or rarity. If so
the case will be forwarded to the IFR Panel for consideration for funding.
Applications where a case of
exceptionality or rarity have not been demonstrated will be triaged out, closed
and will not progress to the IFR Panel for funding consideration. The applicant
will be informed of the reasons for this decision.
It is the clinical applicant’s
responsibility to inform the patient of the outcome of the funding application
and, where appropriate, to discuss next steps.
The IFR application is then
discussed at a monthly IFR panel meeting where the final decision as to whether
to agree to the request is decided. The decision will then be relayed to
the clinician who submitted the application, and they will then inform you of
the outcome.
Page updated 31.3.20
