OHE Publications

This monograph, based on Professor Maynard’s remarks at the 20th OHE Annual Lecture, explores the critical issue of ensuring the quality of care in the NHS. The lecture was delivered just five months after release of the Francis Report, which was the result of a public inquiry into serious failures in patient care at the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust. As with many such inquiries in the past, Francis’s recommendations envisioned more regulation.

This research examines the use of QALY thresholds in NHS Scotland in 2012-13 for health services that were "at the margin", i.e. those for which investment or disinvestment was planned or occurred.

The study was based on information from three sources: public information from the Scottish Parliament's examination of the NHS Boards' expenditure plans, interviews with the Finance Directors of Scotland's territorial NHS Boards, and a literature review.

In this Research Paper, the authors explore which factors have most influenced NICE decisions from 1999 through the end of 2011. The research has two objectives: identifying the influence of cost-effectiveness and other factors on NICE decisions, and investigating whether NICE’s decision making has changed over time.

Since the second edition of this publication appeared in 2002, economic evaluation of new medical technologies as a basis for decisions about their use has expanded to an increasing number of countries and types of technology. At the same time, the methods themselves have evolved in response to experience and to changes in the ability to capture and analyse data.