Individual Patient Funding Requests (IPFR)
Every year, Cwm Taf Morgannwg University Health Board receives money from the Welsh Government to pay for healthcare for everyone who lives in Merthyr Tydfil, Rhondda Cynon Taf and Bridgend 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 two main categories:
- Treatments that are new, novel, developing or unproven and are not normally available for any patients in Merthyr Tydfil and Rhondda Cynon Taf (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 (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:
A video explaining the IPFR process can be viewed here: https://www.awttc.org/ipfr