This story was first published in digitalhealth.net
Government accused of misspending £450m annually on NHS Health Checks
The researchers claimed that the prevention initiative staves off an estimated 1,000 deaths per year ‘at best’, at a cost of £450,000 per death. Walter Holland, leading professor of public health medicine, said that pressuring NHS staff to ‘commit time and scarce resources to activities of debatable effectiveness’ was ‘sapping morale’.
Professor Holland insisted there is 'substantial opportunity costs of failing to invest those scarce resources in alternative, more effective interventions'.
It is feared that costs will ‘spiral’, as the number of people eligible for the scheme has ‘doubled’ after the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) lowered the primary prevention threshold to a 10-year risk of 10 per cent or lower.
Additionally, according to the Journal of Health, the many staff operating in the Department of Health, Public Health England (PHE) and NHS England ‘privately feel’ that the programme is costly and ineffective. The journal counciled that an ‘independent health body’ must be set up to give ministers ‘objective, scientific advice on public health’.
On the other hand, PHE advisors responded to the suggested financial squandering by insisting that previous modelling demonstrated that the programme ‘could be cost-effective compared with other NHS activities’ and they are committed to using ‘emerging evidence of cost-effectiveness to demonstrate the economic value of the programme relative to other interventions the NHS and local government may wish to make’.
Jamie Waterfall, national lead for the NHS Health Check programme commented: “Two thirds of deaths under 75 are preventable, such as strokes and heart attacks and the NHS Health Check aims to help people take action to prevent these diseases in a systematic and cost-effective way.
“Each component of the Health Check is evidenced and aligned with NICE guidelines.”
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