Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC) Decision Explained Documents to be paused

As the health and care system continues to respond to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on services, we face a situation where difficult decisions must be made around where we utilise our resources. In order to deliver the support that the system needs to fully recover, this inevitably means that some work must be paused, rescheduled or redefined.

As a result, we have had to review the resource put into producing the Decision Explained Documents and have had to make the tough decision to temporarily pause their production.

We understand that the Decision Explained Documents, particularly for patient groups and members of the public, offered a more easily understandable version of what can be a complicated process at times. It is regrettable therefore that we feel the need to pause production of this work from October 2022.

We are hopeful that we will be able to reintroduce the documents again in the future.