The real cost of NICE end of life guidance?

A recent paper in the BMJ by Marissa Collins and HEDS’ Nicholas Latimer examined the opportunity cost of NICE implementing its end of life (EoL) criteria. The analysis estimated the QALY losses (generated at £20,000 and £30,000 per QALY) from the disinvestments needed to fund the EoL drugs.

This has produced a response form the Director of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI). Nick tells me that a response from the authors is being written.

A key issue in this debate is the evidence of EoL interventions receiving greater weighting than non-EoL treatments. Evidence is mixed about weighting, although the most recent results from a survey of 3,969 respondents are negative. This work, was a collaboration between HEDS and OHE and is available for download as an OHE Research Paper. The feasibility work for study is available as a HEDS Discussion Paper. 

Also, as highlighted in the ABPI response, the Policy Research Unit in Economic Evaluation of Health and Care Intervention (EEPRU) – a collaboration between HEDS and CHE - is finalising a wider project on societal weightings that is to inform the forthcoming value based pricing mechanism. We’ll let you know as soon as these results are publically available.

Photo credit: Images_of_Money via Flickr Creative Commons