News / Department backs tariff clarity call

The Department of Health has supported a call for the NHS Commissioning Board and Monitor to publish their methodology for establishing and policing tariffs and currencies as soon as possible.

The NHS Future Forum published four reports in January – on education and training; integration; information; and public health – and the government has accepted its recommendations.

The forum said the approach to tariffs and currencies should boost integration. It should include a ‘proportionate, transparent and consistent approach to local price variations and adjustments’ where they supported integrated care, and a clear, simple account of the rules.

Clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) should be given the flexibility to ‘get on and do’. They should be free to develop local integrated solutions while Monitor and the commissioning board develop funding models, it added.

The forum called for greater certainty on CCG under-and over-spends and for multi-year settlements. The Department backed multi-year settlements in principle, but said structures had to settle in first. However, the commissioning board could introduce indicative multi-year settlements that would be confirmed year by year. ?

In its response to the forum’s report on education and training, the Department said tariffs for postgraduate and primary care medical education and training would be set alongside service tariffs. Tariffs for non-medical education and training and undergraduate medical student hospital placements would be phased in from April 2013.

There’s no date for implementing medical training tariffs, but the Department said it would work with stakeholders to revise the reference costing methodology to identify the costs of delivering training alongside service costing.

The forum expressed concern over plans to raise funds for training through a provider levy. The Department is to undertake further work on its  impact.