Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what estimate he has made of the cost to the NHS of treating asthma in each of the last five years.

The following table sets out expenditure on asthma from 2008-09 to 2012-13¹

¹ Aggregate primary care trust (PCT) expenditure on own population from programme budgeting collection. Programme budgeting is an annual collection of expenditure on healthcare conditions by NHS Commissioners. Programme budgeting figures are only estimates.

It should be noted that this does not include expenditure on primary care appointments which is included as a separate category. Other areas of expenditure such as Outpatients and Community Care cannot always be allocated to sub-categories so some expenditure on asthma may be included in ‘Problems of the Respiratory System – Other’ or ‘Other - Miscellaneous’.

Further notes on interpretation of data:

- Expenditure data are calculated from programme budgeting returns for 2003-04 to 2012-13. Programme budgeting returns are based on a subset of PCT accounts data and represent a subset of overall NHS expenditure data.

- Calculating programme budgeting data is complex and not all healthcare activity or services can be classified directly to a programme budgeting category or care setting. When it is not possible to reasonably estimate a programme budgeting category, expenditure is classified as ‘Other’. Expenditure on General Medical Services and Personal Medical Services cannot be reasonably estimated at disease specific level, and is separately identified as a subcategory of ‘Other’ expenditure.

- The allocation of expenditure to programme budgeting subcategories is not always straightforward, and subcategory level data should therefore be used with caution.

- In order to improve data quality, continual refinements have been made to the programme budgeting data calculation methodology since the first collection in 2003-04. The underlying data which support programme budgeting data are also subject to yearly changes. Programme budgeting data cannot be used to analyse changes in investment in specific service areas between years. Users of the data should note that significant changes to the data calculation methodology were introduced in 2010-11.

- Figures for years 2003-04 to 2009-10 are calculated using provider costs as a basis. Figures for 2010-11 to 2012-13 are calculated using price paid for specific activities and services purchased from healthcare providers. PCTs follow standard guidance, procedures and mappings when calculating programme budgeting data.

- PCT figures used to calculate 2010-11 data differ from those previously published in the 2010-11 programme budgeting benchmarking spreadsheet. This is due to the correction of errors identified for five PCTs for this year.

- Aggregate PCT data supersede previously published England level programme budgeting data. England level data incorporated estimates of expenditure on healthcare conditions for the Department of Health, strategic health authorities and special health authorities. England level data is no longer published this data as aggregate PCT figures provide a more accurate and meaningful representation of the breakdown of NHS expenditure by healthcare condition.

- For 2003-04, figures are based on PCT net expenditure. For 2004-05 onwards, figures are based on PCT spend on own population. This is calculated by adjusting net expenditure to add back expenditure funded from sources outside the NHS and to deduct expenditure on other PCT populations incurred through lead commissioning arrangements.