NICE is proposing changes to the process and methods for NICE public health guidance development. They are proposing to make changes to just a few of the areas covered by the guidance, but these include identifying and reviewing evidence during guidance development and conducting economic analyses.
The change to economic analyses are as follows:
“To support the NICE Costing team and local commissioning, we propose that CCA be carried out alongside CUA as standard rather than be considered a secondary (and optional) method of analysis. This will allow us to capture all the health and non-health benefits of public health interventions across different sectors. In addition, we propose that a CBA be undertaken to better capture the complex, multidimensional nature of public health interventions and that the notion of ‘secondary methods’ of economic analysis be dropped entirely. The advantage of the CBA is that it allows multiple outcomes to be compared in a single metric, money. It will also support our future work on calculating returns on investment.”
The proposals are currently out to consultation with the consultation period ending on 9th January 2012.
