Feature / Technical round-up

Education costs – PBR – CCG toolkit – charitable funds

• Health Education England has published the support package for collecting education and training costs from all trusts. There will be two mandatory cost collections for 2013/14 – January’s will cover the first six months of the financial year. To give trusts more flexibility, submissions have been accepted since 25 November. The final deadline for submissions is 5pm on 31 January. A full-year costs collection will take place in June/ July. The support package includes guidance, a how-to guide, FAQs and the costing templates.
• An updated payment by results query sheet has been posted to the online finance manual. The Department of Health document includes answers to questions on the market forces factor in clinical commissioning groups, maternity pathway tariffs, excluded devices and drugs; and commissioning for quality and innovation (CQUIN).
• NHS England has provided clinical commissioning groups with a toolkit to aid decisions on whether to make, buy or share commissioning support. The body said it hoped the toolkit would help CCGs secure high-calibre services representing best value for money. Toolkit use is voluntary, but NHS England said decisions to change commissioning support arrangements should be properly documented.
• The HFMA Charitable Funds Special Interest Group and Accounting and Standards Committee have published their comments on Accounting and reporting by charities: statement of recommended practice (SORP) exposure draft. The response backs the modular format in the exposure draft, issued by the Charity Commission and the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator. The association said it would be of benefit to smaller charities, as they would find it easier to customise the SORP to their needs.
• Foundation trusts have been notified of a change in invoicing arrangements for non-contract activity for patients normally resident in Northern Ireland. A letter from Northern Ireland’s Health and Social Care Board said a regional scanning centre is now processing invoices for this activity. The letter also clarified the criteria that must be satisfied before the board becomes responsible for payment.
• A dashboard of measures NHS organisations can use to improve transparency and understanding of their procurement performance has been issued by the Department of Health. The dashboard includes a set of metrics that can be used to measure performance in three areas – enabling business continuity, procurement efficiency and mitigating risk.
• The Department of Health has posted the Q3 timetables for the agreement of balances exercise for payables/receivables and revenue/ expenditure to the online Finance manual, as well as the Q4 timetable for payables/receivables.