Technical review – September 2019

The Department of Health and Social Care will produce additional guidance as part of the finalisation of the IFRS 16 guidance and this will flow into the 2020/21 Group accounting manual. The Department’s response to the consultation on the 2019/20 manual, which included a consultation on an IFRS 16 supplement, said the public sector approach to the new leasing standard remained a work-in-progress. Respondents requested additional guidance on the use of IFRS 16 to measure liabilities arising from service concession arrangements and on how recognition and derecognition will work in accounting for subleases. With the Treasury finalising the accounting and budgeting approach, this will enable robust guidance to be developed in the manual around all of the proposed public sector interpretations and adaptions of IFRS 16, the Department said. The HFMA also updated its Accounting for leases – application of IFRS 16 briefing at the end of July.

 

New guidance from NHS England and NHS Improvement aims to support commissioners looking to develop an integrated budget as part of the integrated care provider (ICP) contract. The guidance introduces the whole population budget (WPB) approach and summarises the steps involved in designing a pooled budget. A whole population budget represents the total payment amount available to the ICP for all services in-scope for the whole population, which could include general practice, NHS and potentially local authority services. Key steps in developing a WPB include: calculating the WPB baseline; estimating WPB values for future years; and converting estimated WPB values to contract values for each year in a contract. A question and answer document has also been published on the ICP contract, covering issues such as the impact for the voluntary sector and VAT recovery.

The key points in the NHS mental health implementation plan 2019/20-2023/24 are set out in a new summary briefing from the HFMA. The implementation plan explains how a £2.3bn local investment fund will be used to build upon the work of the Five-year forward view for mental health. It also describes how the ambitions for mental health fit with the system planning approach and other sections of the NHS long-term plan.

 

A personalised care handbook covers the finance, commissioning and contracting aspects of implementing personalised care locally. The guidance aims to help staff understand what the expansion of the programmes means for their areas of work, the support available, and the impact on current processes. The guidance covers methods for funding personalised care but stresses that it is crucial to maintain stability of the provider sector.

 

The first clinical service benchmarking metrics have been launched as part of the Model Community Health Services. The metrics cover 10 key areas and are based on organisations’ submissions to the community services data set. The range of services covered will be expanded over the next year.

 

NHS Improvement has published trust accounts consolidation (TAC) data for 2018/19. The information is drawn from the information trusts are required to include in their annual accounts. However, the data does not include all consolidation adjustments made by NHS Improvement, such as those to eliminate income and expenditure between NHS providers. This means it may not agree with the consolidated provider accounts.