Comparing estimates of cost effectiveness submitted to the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) by different organisations: retrospective study

Objective: To assess the association between different types of organisation and the results front economic evaluations.

Design: Retrospective pairwise comparison of evidence submitted to the technology appraisal programme of the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) by manufacturers of the relevant healtltcare technologies and by contracted university based assessment groups.

Data sources: Data front the first 62 appraisals.

Main outcome measure: Incremental cost effectiveness ratios.

Results: Data from 27 of the 62 appraisals could be compared. The analysis of 54 pairwise comparisons showed that manufacturer's estimates of incremental cost effectiveness ratios were lower (suggesting a snore cost effective use of resources) than those produced by the assessment groups (25 were lower, 29 were the wine, none were higher, P < 0.01). Restriction of this dataset to include only one pairwise comparison per appraisal (27 pairs) produced a similar result (21 were lower, two were the same, four were higher, P < 0.001).

Conclusions: The estimated incremental cost effectiveness ratios submitted by manufacturers were on average significantly lower than those submitted by the assessment groups. These results show that an important role of NICE's appraisal committee, and of decision makers in general, is to determine which economic evaluations, or parts of evaluations, should be given more credence.