A WOMAN will be denied free National Health Service treatment for breast cancer if she seeks to improve her chances by paying privately for an additional drug.

Colette Mills, a former nurse, has been told that if she attempts to top up her treatment privately, she will have to foot the entire £10,000 bill for her drugs and care. The bizarre threat stems from the refusal by the government to let patients pay for additional drugs that are not prescribed on the NHS.

Ministers say it is unfair on patients who cannot afford such top-up drugs and that it will create a two-tier NHS. It is thought thousands of patients suffer as a result of the policy.

Mills, 58, is thought to be the first to take a public stand in challenging her NHS trust to allow her to pay for the drug as part of her NHS treatment.

She wants to top up her treatment with Avastin. “The policy of my local NHS trust is that I must be an NHS patient or a private patient,” she said.

“If I want to pay for Avastin, I must pay for everything. It’s immoral that the drugs are out there and freely available to certain people, yet they say I cannot have it.”

With many “wonder drugs” in the pipeline that the NHS is unlikely to fund, her predicament is likely to be shared by increasing numbers of patients who could afford additional life-extending drugs but not the cost of their entire care.

Mills, a mother of two, who lives near Stokesley in North Yorkshire, is being treated with the drug Taxol, which is available on the NHS, but believes that her chances of halting the cancer would be improved by also using Avastin.

She is prepared to pay South Tees Hospitals NHS Trust for the Avastin and the cost of its administration. This would amount to at least £4,000 a month. Mills does not want to pay for all of her NHS treatment, however.

“The costs would increase from £4,000 a month to about £10,000 to £15,000 for all my care. I would need to pay charges for seeing the consultant, for the nurses’ time, for blood tests and scans,” she said.

Some doctors support her case. Professor Karol Sikora, medical director of CancerPartners UK, a private cancer company, said: “This is unfair to taxpayers who are entitled to NHS care. If this patient wishes to pay for another drug, that should be her choice. The patient should be invoiced by the NHS for the extra treatment, with a mark-up to cover the hospital’s costs.” The government is opposed to the so-called “co-payments” because they would lead to patients in the same NHS ward receiving different drugs based solely on their ability to pay. But doctors say this already happens where private and NHS patients are treated at the same NHS unit.

Some patients have got access to the drugs by going fully private. Others have continued with their basic NHS care while receiving an additional drug from a private company at home. By contrast, Mills believes that it is her right for her local NHS trust to provide the drug if she is prepared to pay for it.

South Tees Hospitals NHS Trust said: “If a patient chooses to go private for certain drugs they elect to become a private patient for the course of their treatment for that condition. That is the trust policy.”

The Department of Health said: “Co-payments would risk creating a two-tier health service and be in direct contravention with the principles and values of the NHS.”

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