Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the average cost to the public purse is for a (a) knee, (b) hip and (c) shoulder replacement.

Information on how many joint replacements have taken place in each of the last five years is shown in the table below and provides a breakdown of individual episodes of care by procedure, including hip and knee replacements. The following table is a count of finished consultant episodes (FCE) for main or secondary procedures and interventions for joint replacements for financial years 2012/13 – 2016/17.

Source: Hospital Episode Statistics, NHS Digital

Note:

A FCE is a continuous period of admitted patient care under one consultant within one healthcare provider. FCEs are counted against the year in which they end. Figures do not represent the number of different patients, as a person may have more than one episode of care within the same stay in hospital or in different stays in the same year.

Data for the estimated average unit cost to National Health Service providers for a knee, hip and shoulder replacement in 2016/17 is shown in the following table. The data is sourced from reference costs, which are the average unit cost to the NHS of providing defined services to NHS patients in England in a given financial year.

Source: NHS Improvement Reference Costs

The table uses the average reference costs for acute care and are collected by healthcare resource group, which are standard groupings of clinically similar treatments that consume similar levels of healthcare resource. The costs cover one episode of care under one consultant and do not include other elements of the patient pathway such as outpatient appointments.