Exploring Local NHS Decisions about Investment

OHE is pleased to welcome Jamie Garside to the team. Jamie recently graduated with an MSc in health economics (with Distinction) from City University London.

OHE is pleased to welcome Jamie Garside to the team.  Jamie recently graduated with an MSc in health economics (with Distinction) from City University London.

Jamie is a temporary Research Fellow at the Centre for Health Economics at the University of York. For the coming few months, he will be based at OHE working with Professors Nancy Devlin (OHE’s Director of Research) and with David Parkin (Chief Economist at the South East Coast Strategic Health Authority).

Jamie will be investigating decisions being made at the local level in the NHS — for example, by Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) – to invest or disinvest in health care services.

This work is one aspect of a wider research project being led by Professor Mark Sculpher at the University of York, funded by the NIHR[1]-MRC[2] Methodology Research Programme, to develop methodologies to identify the marginal cost of a QALY in the NHS. This work was funded by MRC as part of its programme of research relevant to NICE. The project is mentioned in the UK Government’s current consultation on value based pricing as generating results of direct relevance to the question of what NICE’s cost effectiveness threshold should be.

OHE’s work on this topic aims to identify specific examples of health care services ‘at the margin’ in the NHS. This builds on previous research on local level decision making. That information will be used to complement the econometric modelling work being led from the University of York, which forms the principal part of the project.