This week a special mention, I think, for Holyrood's Health and Sport Committee.

It was its inquiry last autumn that threw a spotlight on to the battle to get very sick patients in Scotland on to some of the latest available drugs.

The Scottish Government, despite repeated bashings by charities, pharmaceutical companies and patients, appeared very reluctant to do anything as Scotland's reputation for being prompt when bringing new treatments to the bedside disintegrated and the country was shown repeatedly to be falling behind.

One patient, William Devine, died within days of receiving a letter refusing him potentially life-transform­ing treatment, despite the pleas of his expert clinician. Still nothing changed.

Then the committee launched its probe and clinicians wrote to it revealing the scale of frustration with the number of medicines rejected for NHS use by the Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC). Furthermore, it became apparent doctors had no faith in the system they could supposedly use to make a special request on behalf of a patient for one of the blocked drugs.

So when the Scottish Government finally announced a series of reforms to improve access to new medicines on Tuesday, it was the members of the health committee who really deserved the pat on the back.

The proposed changes sound promising, particularly the plan to scrap the system for applying for rejected treatments, although there is not the detail yet to know how well they work in practice.

What the shake-up does not mean, however, is an end to stories about potentially beneficial drugs being rejected.

It is very easy to make emotive headlines about treatments which offer hope to the terminally ill, however slim that hope might be and however high the price tag. Extra months with someone you love is priceless, but it does not change the fact that the NHS budget is finite. Hospitals cannot buy slim chances, no matter the cost.

Here are two observations from insiders at the SMC.

First, the figures drugs companies select to quote in press releases about rejected drugs are often different from the trial data their economists scrutinise when considering the effectiveness of a new treatment. Secondly, when the SMC accepts a drug which is more expensive than its usual threshold, it finds the price of other new medicines starts creeping up. Scotland needs to improve access to new medicines but, when it comes to questioning the pharmaceutical industry about the products it peddles, it is also important that the SMC remains tough.

Wider society needs to face up to some difficult questions too. There are many ways of making a difference to a patient's chances that are not backed by slick marketing teams: making sure a pensioner admitted to hospital after a fall is seen by a geriatrician, for example; scanning stroke patients in optimal time and getting them on to a stroke unit; offering all emergency patients the same speed of treatment seven days a week. If we cannot have it all, what do we want most?