Feature / Technical round-up

03 May 2012

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  • The Department of Health has published a summary of the proposed 2013/14 payment by results pathway funding system for maternity services. The guide, published in conjunction with the HFMA, the Royal College of Midwives and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, flags up preparations ahead of implementation. Under the new system, a commissioner will pay a provider for all the pregnancy- related care a woman may need.

  • The NHS Information Centre has issued the 2011/12 reference costs grouper. This should be used to process and produce HRG4 data for reference cost collection for the 2011/12 financial year.

  • The National Casemix Office has invited NHS finance managers and other key stakeholders to take part in a survey on their use of the reference cost documentation and report suite. The aim is to better understand how the products are used and inform how they can be improved and developed. The National Casemix Office said it welcomed multiple responses from individuals and teams within the same organisation.

  • The payment by results team at the Department of Health has published the chemotherapy regimens list for coding, reporting and costing chemotherapy regimens in the NHS in England. Requests for inclusion in the regimens list for 2013/14 will be considered until 31 August. Submissions that are made after this date will be included in the subsequent updates, the Department said.

  • The Department of Health and NHS Information Centre are opening a mandatory monthly data collection – the ‘diagnostic imaging dataset' – giving information about access by NHS patients to diagnostic imaging tests across the country. Extracts of data will be required for the month of April 2012 onwards. This first extract of data will need to be submitted in mid-May.

  • Providers and commissioners have been given guidance on how to use the secondary uses service (SUS) to support local contract reconciliation and payment. The NHS Information Centre document expands on the brief paragraph included in the operating framework, which called on PCT clusters to ‘ensure providers use the SUS for performance monitoring, reconciliation and payments’.

  • The Audit Commission has published its fees and work programme for 2012/13. Work programme and scales of fees 2012/13: health includes planned local value-for-money work and national reports, and fees for the commission’s payment by results assurance framework.

  • The Department of Health has issued a range of documents on the development of payment by results (PBR) for sexual health services. The Department’s PBR team said work currently falls into two areas – integrated sexual health and HIV outpatient services. It intends introducing a national currency in shadow form for the former in 2013/14, while 2012/13 is a shadow year for the HIV adult outpatients currency.

  • Expenses incurred under dental contracts for 2012/13 will increase by 0.5%, largely to fund pay rises for practice staff earning less than £21,000, the Department of Health has announced. The Department said practices should work with local commissioners to prepare for a move to a national contract based on capitation, quality and registration.

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