Specialised Commissioning Alert: ear

Showing posts with label ear. Show all posts

1 November 2019

The GIRFT review of ENT services visited 126 units across the country. This report highlights a significant degree of unwarranted variation in a number of key areas in delivery of ENT surgery and suggests how the many examples of good practice in the delivery of ENT services could be adopted in order to improve patient care and outcomes.
The report makes 23 recommendations ranging from increasing day case surgery, networks for out-of-hours provision, improve the procurement of devices and consumables, consider including Patient Reported Outcome Metrics (PROMs) for ENT and head and neck surgery and implement the GIRFT 5 point plan for reducing litigation costs.

An estimate of the potential budget impact of changing the eligibility criteria for cochlear implants in Scotland. This follows a change to NICE guidance in England, which includes modifications to the clinical criteria for what constitutes severe or profoundly deaf, and how ‘adequate benefit’ from hearing aids is measured.
Key findings

Cochlear implants are deemed to be clinically and cost effective based on pre-existing NICE technology appraisal guidance (TA566).
Changes to the assessment of eligibility for cochlear implants is expected to increase the number of people eligible to receive a cochlear implant in Scotland.

This guidance has been updated after a review of the criteria for defining severe to profound deafness and for assessing adequate benefit from acoustic hearing aids. No other sections of the guidance have been updated, so these are the same as in the original guidance.
Commissioners have 3 months from publication to implement these recommendations.
"Currently around 1,260 people in England receive cochlear implants each year. These updated recommendations could lead to a 70% increase in that number, to 2,150 people, once a steady state is reached in 2024/25" - from NICE news item discussing the impact of the change, including costs.

This specification covers provision of auditory brainstem implant (ABI) services for children with congenital abnormalities of the auditory nerves or cochleae.