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Dept of Health

Answer

Mr. Burstow: To ask the Secretary of State for Health pursuant to his Answer to the honourable Member for Truro and St Austell of 6th February 2003, Official Report, column 450W, on performance targets, how his Department will measure progress towards achieving the public service agreement target on value for money. [138199] Mr. Hutton: The value for money Public Service Agreement (PSA) target requires that `Value for money in the National Health Service and personal social services will improve by at least 2 per cent. per annum, with annual improvements of 1 per cent, in both cost efficiency and service effectiveness'. For the NHS, the cost efficiency element of the PSA target will be measured by comparing data from the National Schedule of Reference Costs between one year and the previous year. Adjustments to this simple comparison will be made to take account of changes in casemix, quality investment, input price inflation and externally driven, one-off, cost-increasing events such as rising employer pensions contributions. The quality element of the target will be assessed by comparing the estimated expenditure on increasing service effectiveness with data on quality from the NHS performance ratings exercise. A key element of this will be the value that can be placed on the lives saved from reducing mortality following health care interventions. For personal social services, costs will be based on unit costs of services, after some adjustments to allow for increases in funding for quality improvements. The quality element will be based on the quality indicators published by the Department, in the social services performance assessment framework, for instance, waiting times for care packages.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

413 c870W; 138199

Session

2002-03

Subjects

Health services NHS Standards Department of Health Public service agreements

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk