OBJECTIVES: Patient Access Schemes (PAS) are agreed between pharmaceutical companies and the Department of Health (DoH, with input from National Institute of Health and Care Excellence [NICE]) that enable companies to offer discounts or rebates that reduce the cost of a drug. PAS proposals are made in the context of a NICE technology appraisal, with the aim of improving cost-effectiveness to enable a positive NICE recommendation. This research aims to systematically analyse all PASs for NICE- approved technologies with respect to the type of scheme agreed, indication, company and how these have varied over time. METHODS: Publically available technologies with approved PASs were identified from the NICE website and the date, treatment, indication, company, and type of scheme were extracted. RESULTS: CONCLUSIONS: PASs have been utilised by many pharmaceutical companies to help gain NICE approval primarily in oncology. Their utilisation has notably increased in recent years alongside a very strong trend to almost exclusively be simple discount schemes, perhaps reflecting DoH aversion to managing more complex schemes. Nevertheless, the recent dose capping PAS agreed with GSK for Tafinlar in October 2014, illustrate that other types of schemes will still be considered acceptable by the DoH.