The Specialised Endocrinology Clinical Reference Group (CRG) continues to strive for our discipline through NHS England.

Further to my last update in The Endocrinologist, we have now introduced pegvisomant up and down the country, and this should be accessible through Blueteq. This means that everybody who fulfils the agreed criteria (which have been publicised and can be found on the NHS England website) can access pegvisomant. If there are problems, please let us know.

Pasireotide for the treatment of Cushing’s is also coming through Blueteq.

I think everybody should now be aware of the endocrine dashboard. Hopefully endocrinologists are setting up links with their performance  and contracts teams and together are filling it in, so that we can obtain useful data. While it is not perfect, it does assess some aspects of endocrine care, and this will hopefully enable us to make comparisons across the country.

We are in the process of ensuring good quality care for patients with adrenal cancer and neuroendocrine tumours by ensuring the presence of multidisciplinary teams and effective networks. Neuroendocrine tumours are, for the most part, managed in European Neuroendocrine Tumor Society (ENETS)-accredited centres in most parts of the country.

We are about to revise the national service specification for specialised endocrinology, with a view to delineating the conditions to be treated under NHS England as ‘specialised’. We will be defining criteria for inclusion and exclusion during this reiteration. If you have views on this issue, please let us know.

We intend to arrange a meeting to discuss commissioning in endocrinology at the forthcoming Society for Endocrinology BES conference on Wednesday 8 November. We look forward to seeing you there if you would like to discuss any of these matters further, though you are of course very welcome to contact us in the meantime.

John Wass

Clinical Committee correspondent

John Wass is Professor of Endocrinology, University of Oxford Chair, Specialised Endocrinology Clinical Reference Group

You can find more information on the work of the Group on the NHS England website.