Comment / Roadmap partners to support acute costing

The regulator has mapped out how the service will move to the collection and submission of patient-level cost data using a revised methodology. Each sector – acute, ambulance, mental health and community – will take four years to move to a mandated collection, with the acute sector leading the way in a staggered timetable.

Development collections in the first two years in each sector transition will be restricted to volunteer roadmap partner organisations. For the acute sector, the roadmap partners have been named as:

• Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust
• Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust
• The Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust
• The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust
• The Royal Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
• University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust.

Monitor’s revised costing approach involves mapping resources from the general ledger to resource groups, then to activity groups and finally to patients. It has also told costing practitioners what documents will be published to support the costing process.

Costing standards will provide detailed instructions on the costing process, while guidance will explain how to cost specific procedures and services. Information requirement documents will describe the activity information collected by organisations and how it can be used in the costing process. A glossary will explain all technical terms. There will also be collection guidance to accompany the submission process.

Monitor said its first version of acute standards would be published in March and be available to the whole costing community. But only roadmap partners would be required to implement the standards and collect cost information using the standards in 2016.

The standards work sits along other workstreams to demonstrate the financial and non-financial costs and benefits of costing and to set out the minimum requirements for costing systems – part of a programme of accrediting software suppliers.

A recent survey asked for views on these requirements and what information should be incorporated in patient cost collections to aid benchmarking.