Feature / Technical round-up

Education guidance – cost template – continuing care – VAT

• Guidance for the 2013/14 year-end collection of education and training costs has been published by the Department of Health. The collection follows on from the mandatory half-year collection at the beginning of the year. The submitted costs will inform the development of new education and training tariffs. Community services activity and cost data – collected on a voluntary basis at half-year – will come into the mandatory scope of the collection.
• After the collection guidance was sent out for the year-end education and training cost collection, the Department of Health issued a revised cost template. The corrected issues include a reordering of some of the nursing programmes on the non-salaried sheet and an amendment to a validation used in the salaried programmes. The template also reflects feedback about the length of particular training programmes. No further changes will be made to the template.
• The payment process for ?new cases of individuals found eligible for NHS continuing healthcare payments will change, NHS England has said. In a letter to CCGs, NHS England said the Commissioning Assembly finance working group has agreed to implement a pooling arrangement to fund the payments. Until this is set up, it was proposed that CCGs would directly reimburse?all patients found eligible after?22 May. CCG contributions towards the cost of future claims would be adjusted to reflect interim payments.
• Monitor has published a Department of Health note on VAT on invoices from NHS Property Services. The note was prompted by a number queries and addresses issues relating to the supply of buildings and tenancies. The Department said tenants may find that invoices contain VAT where previously it was not levied, but it believed the VAT will be recoverable under contracted-out services rules.
• Northern Ireland health and social care organisations have been issued guidance on cross-border emergency treatment in the UK. The circular also includes 2014/15 national tariff guidance and updates the bodies on how they should charge for cross-border emergency treatments in 2014/15.
• Department of Health monthly figures demonstrate that it has paid at least 97% of supplier invoices within five working days of receipt this year. Figures for the first four months of the calendar year show the percentage of invoices paid range from 97.75% in January to 99.1% in April. The figures are similar to 2013, when the range was 96.18% to 98.53%.
• The level of gross mismatch found in the agreement of balances exercise must be significantly reduced before submission of final accounts to the Department of Health, NHS England said. A letter to CCG chief financial officers said the latest reports show a gross mismatch of £1.7bn in the NHS England group. It was critical that both balance sheet and income and expenditure mismatches are significantly reduced, it added.
• The Department of Health has published the primary dental services financial entitlement statement for 2014. This covers payments under the general dental services contract or primary dental services agreement and includes a 1.6% uplift in dental contract values; a 1% increase in dental foundation trainee salaries; and a 1% rise in trainers’ allowance.