Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate his Department has made of the number of procedures deliverable per £1 million of Departmental spend via (a) NHS internal delivery, (b) outsourcing and (c) insourcing.

The National Health Service’s national cost collection gives a national average unit cost of £751 across all planned procedures within outpatients, day cases, and elective inpatient settings in 2023/24. This is the equivalent to 1,331 procedures per £1 million. Further information on the NHS’s national cost collection is available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/costing-in-the-nhs/national-cost-collection/

Prices for individual procedures are set out in the NHS Payment Scheme. How the procedures are delivered is a local decision, to reflect local population need and to allow for the greatest opportunity to deliver value for money in local budgets. The Department does not hold a national estimate by procedure of care delivered through insourcing or outsourcing. However, NHS guidance for both insourcing and outsourcing makes clear the expectation that services are contracted at or below the unit prices set out in the NHS Payment Scheme.