Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they have taken to identify the range of costs among NHS acute hospital providers for (1) routine (a) hip, (b) knee, and (c) cataract, operations, (2) routine (a) CT, (b) MRI scans, and (c) x-rays, and (3) routine pathology tests; and whether they will publish such information as an aid to holding NHS providers to account for public expenditure.

NHS England collects and publishes ‘National Cost Collection for the NHS’ annually in an online only format. This data is collected by Healthcare Resource Groups (HRGs), which are standard groupings of clinically similar treatments using similar levels of healthcare resources.

This data will show HRGs for hip, knee, cataract procedures and outpatient computerised tomography (CT) or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) when the relevant clinical coding has been documented in the patient’s record. A cost for the activity will then be assigned by the relevant National Health Service trust. However, where a CT or MRI has been undertaken during an inpatient episode or attendance in accident and emergency, this will be included in the composite cost of the HRG and will not be separately identifiable.

While information on x-rays and pathology testing is collected, this is for direct access for general practitioners (GPs). The report of an x-ray or result of a pathology test is returned to the GP rather than a hospital clinician or consultant. Where this procedure is undertaken at the request of a hospital clinician or consultant, it is not reported separately.

Additionally, data on costs is also made available to NHS providers through Patient Level Information Costing System (PLICS) dashboards, the Model Hospital and Getting It Right First Time programmes, which support health providers to improve patient treatment and productivity. The PLICS dashboards allow trusts to examine data to understand the difference between costs incurred in comparison to other similar organisations. NHS England uses this information and other performance data to hold NHS organisations to account.