Collection

NHS reference costs

Reference costs are the average unit cost to the NHS of providing secondary healthcare to NHS patients.

This was published under the 2010 to 2015 Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government
From:
Department of Health and Social Care
Published
23 January 2014
Last updated
15 December 2016 鈥� See all updates

DHSC has collected reference costs from NHS providers for every financial year since 1997.

Reference costs are used to set prices for NHS-funded services in England. They also support our commitment to data transparency for the benefit of patients and the public.

Monitor is now accountable for the reference costs collection, with the department continuing to collect reference costs on its behalf. Monitor鈥檚 strategy for costing and cost collection to inform price setting is set out in their .

Published reference costs

The data collected in reference costs is presented in 3 ways:

  • national schedules of reference costs - these show the national average unit costs derived from the average unit costs of NHS provider
  • reference costs index - a measure of the relative efficiency of NHS providers
  • database of source data - publishing the data submitted by NHS providers gives a valuable source of information for benchmarking of costs and other more detailed analysis (only source data from 2008 to 2009 is currently available)

Reference costs from 1998 to 2009 are available on the .

Reference costs collection guidance

The submission of reference costs by NHS providers is supported by detailed guidance published each year by the department. This guidance has been part of Monitor鈥檚 鈥楢pproved Costing Guidance鈥� since 2013.

Updates to this page

Published 23 January 2014
Last updated 15 December 2016 show all updates

  1. Added NHS reference costs 2015 to 2016.

  2. Added NHS reference costs 2014 to 2015

  3. First published.

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