Region targets prescription cuts under ‘enormous financial pressure’

All but one of a region’s integrated care boards have stopped prescribing gluten-free products to save money, with a charity saying the move will exacerbate inequalities and risk “debilitating symptoms”.

Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland ICB became the latest to withdraw funding for prescriptions for all gluten free food and mixes last month.

This means 13 ICBs nationally – nearly a third – have stopped them altogether, according to Coeliac UK. This includes all the boards in the Midlands region except Lincolnshire, according to LLR’s business case on the change.

LLR estimates the change will save it about £250,000 a year, and said in a statement it must “carefully consider expenditure for all conditions, balancing it with clinical risk and patient needs”, at a “time of significant financial pressure”.

NHSE updated national guidance in 2018 to say commissioners can choose to fund up to eight units per person per month of bread or flour mix, or bread, but also to permit them to “choose to end prescribing of gluten food altogether”.

At the time, it said the NHS was spending more than £15m a year on gluten free prescriptions, while there was “increased availability of these products in supermarkets and other food outlets”.

However, Coeliac UK's head of advocacy, Tristan Humphreys, told HSJ: “Our message to commissioners would be to remember the responsibility to reducing health inequality and the particular challenges faced by patients on low incomes.”

Gluten-free products are more expensive, and Mr Humphreys told HSJ there was still “limited availability” in rural or more deprived communities. 

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Source: HSJ, 2 January 2025