Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how his Department evaluates the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of bariatric surgery.

Information about National Health Service spending on bariatric surgery is not available in the format requested. Information is available from reference costs, which are the average cost to NHS trusts and NHS foundation trusts for providing defined services in a given financial year to NHS patients. Reference costs for acute care are collected by Healthcare Resource Groups (HRGs), which are standard groupings of clinically similar treatments that consume common levels of healthcare resource. The HRGs in the attached table are specific to bariatric surgery and were introduced in 2011-12. For previous years, costs data is not available because the costs of bariatric surgery were included in HRGs which also covered other stomach procedures.

The Department has not undertaken an assessment of the potential benefits of bariatric surgery or evaluated its efficacy and cost-effectiveness.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has issued “Guidance on the prevention, identification, assessment and management of overweight and obesity in adults and children”. This includes recommendations on when to consider bariatric surgery for people who are obese. These recommendations were informed by an evidence review process, conducted by NICE, on the benefits and effectiveness of surgery. NICE is currently consulting on this guidance.