Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department has made an estimate of the real-terms value of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence’s £30,000 Quality-Adjusted Life Year threshold since its introduction in 1999.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) considers the overall resources available to the National Health Service when determining whether an intervention represents value for money. Therefore, decisions about a new technology must consider the implications for healthcare programmes for other patient groups that may be displaced by the adoption of the new technology, and the opportunity cost, including those programmes or technologies not evaluated by NICE. NICE’s threshold represents the opportunity cost to the NHS of recommending a new technology. Empirical evidence suggests that the actual opportunity cost is closer to £15,000 per Quality Adjusted Life Year gained. Considering the real terms value of the NICE’s threshold is therefore not directly relevant because it represents the opportunity cost to the NHS.