The NICE Reference Case Requirement

Excerpt

In the accompanying correspondence, Langley[1] considers the implications of the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) requirement for a reference case methodology for health technology assessments. He argues that the data requirements of the reference case approach are not currently fulfilled. Moreover, to do so would be very costly in terms of: (i) the resources required to collect and analyse the data and (ii) delays to decision-making processes arising from the greater patient recruitment to trials required to comply with the reference case requirement. Finally, he questions the validity of the estimates used in the reference case approach that underlie the NICE recommendations. He concludes that the reference case requirement will be seen “… not as an aid in decision making (and from a resource allocation perspective, a possibly reasonable request), but as one more, poorly thought through hurdle to healthcare innovation”.[1] In this sense he seems to suggest that the ‘costs’ of adopting the reference case requirement exceed any benefits of improvements to the allocation of available resources associated with the reference case approach. …