National Osteoporosis Society Welcomes Court Judgement

Main Category: Bones / Orthopaedics
Article Date: 22 Feb 2009 - 1:00 PST

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The National Osteoporosis Society has welcomed today's ruling that the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) has acted unlawfully by not allowing public scrutiny of their economic model.

Today's ruling will give the National Osteoporosis Society the opportunity to prove that the economic model used by NICE is flawed, which the charity believes is key to securing cost effective treatments for a wide range of people.

Nick Rijke, Director of Public and External Affairs at the National Osteoporosis Society said: "This is the second time in ten months that NICE have been found to have acted unlawfully by not allowing proper public scrutiny of their economic modelling. Hopefully this judgement will force NICE to change the way they work and take public scrutiny more seriously. We welcome today's judgement, which finally gives us the proper access to the economic modelling that NICE use to decide which treatments the NHS should prescribe.

Professor David Reid, Chair of the National Osteoporosis Society said:
"The release of the models ordered by the court will gives us the opportunity to prove that a wider range of treatment options giving patients is cost effective. Now that annual treatment has come down to as little as £20 as opposed to the £95 quoted by NICE, we will be able to ensure that more patients can get effective and inexpensive treatment.

The truth is that we are spending £2.3 billion a year treating hip fractures, but spend very little preventing those fractures from occurring in the first place. This has got to change and today the Court has given us the chance to make real progress.''

In the UK one in two women and one in five men over the age of 50 will break a bone, manly because of osteoporosis.

Notes

1. Osteoporosis, the fragile bone disease, usually affects the whole skeleton but it commonly causes breaks (fractures) to bones in the wrist, spine and hip. There are over 70,000 hip, 50,000 wrist and 120,000 spinal fractures each year in the UK.

2. Hip fractures alone cost the NHS £2.3 billion per year.

3. 1,150 people are dying every month as a result of their hip fracture

4. Evidence has shown that half of future hip fractures would be prevented if everyone was treated for osteoporosis after their first fracture.

5. Over the past six years there have been approximately 420,000 hip fractures in the UK. Many tens of thousands of these people will have been permanently disabled, most will have suffered a dramatic reduction in their quality of life and more than 80,000 people will have died as a consequence of their hip fracture.

6. The National Osteoporosis Society is the only UK wide charity dedicated to improving the diagnosis, prevention and treatment of osteoporosis.

National Osteoporosis Society