Joint Formularies

The Joint Formulary has been built in the spirit of cooperative collaboration between Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire and has been designed as an advisory/guidance tool to assist in promoting cost-effective prescribing within the local Health Community.

It is a joint venture between primary and secondary care, covering all prescribing within the Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire Health community. This therefore ensures that patients have continuity of medicines across the primary/secondary care interface.

All Medicines

Please refer to the Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire Joint Formulary website for all approved formulary choices.

Any drug that is not listed on the Formulary website is considered Non-Formulary and therefore not appropriate for routine prescribing. If there is a particular drug that a clinician wishes to prescribe for a cohort of patients then a New Pharmaceutical Drug Request form should be completed and submitted to the Joint Formulary Group (JFG) for consideration.

However, there will be individual cases when deviation from the Formulary is clinically necessary. In these cases, where exceptionality can be shown, that is, where there is not a cohort of patients with the same condition who would benefit equally from this medication, an IFR Drug Application form should be completed for consideration by the relevant EFR Panel.

For further advice in Primary Care please complete the online enquiry form.

NHS England

Since 1 April 2013, a number of interventions which were previously commissioned by the CCG transferred to NHS England. This includes Bariatric Surgery for children (surgical procedures and associated care), Bone Anchored Hearing Aids (now known as Bone Conduction Hearing Implants), Penile Prosthesis and Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy.

For the majority of NHS England policies it is the responsibility of the hospital consultant to apply for funding electronically via the Blueteq system.

If you do not have access to this system, Exceptional Funding Requests must be completed on separate NHS England forms. These can be downloaded from: NHS England Key Documents Please send to: england.ifr@nhs.net with IFR South in the subject box.

If you wish to discuss any aspect of the NHS England process, please call the Specialised Commissioning Team on 0113 824 9927.

NHS England is also responsible for Specialist Dental Treatment. Please use the NHS England Individual Funding Request form to make a request and send to the South West Team at: england.swdental@nhs.net If you wish to speak to the Dental Team directly please call 0113 824 8820.

Further information can be found at NHS England Specialised Services.