ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses sources of cost and health outcome data available at a UK national level. Its explanation of cost data will cover secondary care including ward stays, hospital attendances and outpatient appointments, staff and drugs. The chapter examines an approach for inflating costs over time. It outlines the system of Payment by Results, which applies average cost data to procedures across all National Health Service (NHS) trusts in England and Wales. NHS Reference Costs are potentially one of the most useful cost sources since they include national average unit costs for NHS hospital care and community-based services in England and Wales. Reference Costs are split into two sections: the National Schedule of Reference Costs and the National Reference Cost Index. The Personal Social Services Research Unit at the University of Kent produces an annual report on unit costs of providing care. There are many cancer datasets available from the 'health and care' section on the National Statistics website.
