Volume 1

Allocation of resources to health authorities : second report / Health Committee.

  • Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Health Committee.
Date:
1996
Catalogue details

Licence: Open Government Licence

Credit: Allocation of resources to health authorities : second report / Health Committee. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    39/60 (page 37)
    7. [There is] one possible weak link in the chain of calculation which precedes the application of the three weightings. This is that the population data for each health authority area, the base data to which the weightings are subsequently applied, is ultimately derived from the decennial censuses, and any inaccuracy in the census data will therefore feed through the entire operation of the formula. There are two grounds for suspecting that the population data used in the formula may be less than wholly accurate. One is that by its nature ... population data for each area will become to some degree less reliable year by year during the 10-year gap between censuses. ... The other ground for concern is that the original census data may itself be inaccurate because of under-enumeration. ... We believe that further investigation into this potential deficiency in the data fed into the formula should be carried out by the DoH and ONS, and the results published. We also believe that consideration should be given to the reinstatement of a quinquennial sample census as a possible means of alleviating this problem. (Para 103) 8. From [the] statistics set out in Table 7 ... it would appear that the weighting which introduces the greatest variation in each authority’s relative position is the needs weighting, followed by the Market Forces Factor. (Para 108) 9. In our Report of last Session on Priority-Setting in the NHS: Purchasing, we strongly endorsed certain principles which have been widely and correctly regarded as fundamental to the NHS. The first of these principles was that of equity, which we stated as follows: that all patients should receive high-quality health care according to their assessed need; that factors such as age, sex, ethnicity, occupation, social class and geography should have no bearing on the availability or the speed of delivery of services. The resource allocation formula we have discussed in this Report is potentially a powerful instrument for securing equity within the NHS. For this reason it is important that every effort is made to ensure that, in the words of the HFMA, it is as technically correct as humanly possible. We are glad that the present Secretary of State for Health has asserted that he regards the formula as a key part of the development of the management of the NHS. There is no doubt that there have been cumulative gains over recent years in the sensitivity of the formula, not least due to the work of the York University team. In this Report we have drawn attention to some remaining areas of weakness, including the pace of