§ Mr. DevlinTo ask the Secretary of State for Health what was the lowest and the highest average cost of in-patient treatment in a district health authority in the latest year for which figures are available.
§ Mr. FreemanInformation within hospitals costing returns for health authority managed hospitals is published in aggregated tables of average treatment costs by type of hospital for health regions and England in the Department's annual publication "Health Services Costing Returns" (the latest being for 1986–87), copies of which are held in the Library.
797WAll hospitals are classified for costing purposes into one of a series of standard types which reflect the principal use to which their beds are allocated. Although in-patient treatment costs may vary between hospitals of the same type, those categorised "pre-convalescent", "convalescent" or "mental handicap" generally have lower average costs, while higher average costs are usually incurred at hospitals within such categories as "acute", "childrens acute" and "eye".
The published regional summary tables for 1986–87 show that an average cost per in-patient day of £17.45 was incurred by a convalescent hospital, whilst among the highest individual hospital average costs recorded was £238.68 per inpatient day for Papworth hospital, Cambridgeshire.