Mental health development PLICS cost collection guidance 2017/18

Updated October 2018

We support providers to give patients

safe, high quality, compassionate care

within local health systems that are

financially sustainable.

1 | > 1. Introduction

Contents

1. Introduction ................................................................................ 2

2. Scope ......................................................................................... 4

3. Collection timetable .................................................................. 10

4. Applying the Healthcare costing standards – mental health .... 11

5. Information governance ........................................................... 12

6. Treatment of specific costs and services/ activities: additional guidance ...................................................................................... 15

7. Reconciliation tables ................................................................ 18

8. Collection extract files – overview ............................................ 22

Please note: This document was updated in October 2018

2 | > 1. Introduction

1. Introduction

Purpose of this guidance

This guidance gives the technical specifications we are asking mental health early

implementers and roadmap partners to adhere to for a Patient-Level Information and

Costing Systems (PLICS) collection in autumn 2018. We specify the scope of the

collection and provide additional guidance to support the consistent allocation of

costs.

The guidance covers:

• the collection’s scope

• NHS Digital’s role

• how we will use the data

• collection specification files

• how to report specific costs.

We do not cover the submission process and data validations; we will provide details

of these topics later in the year.

Background

The NHS in England currently makes one national cost collection for mental health –

the national cost collection (reference costs). The education and training cost return

is not required for 2018, but it will be required in 2019.

One common issue for providers in the 2015/16 reference costs collection was their

costing approaches not aligning with our approved costing guidance. Inaccurate

costing approaches can distort the national average.

In response to this issue, we are developing the collection with a view to moving to a

patient-level mental health collection by 2019/20. This will improve the consistency of

the costing methods applied across the national collection and, once established, will

reduce the burden on providers. The Costing Transformation Programme1 (CTP)

focuses on patient-level costing to achieve a step change in the quality of cost

1 https://improvement.nhs.uk/resources/transforming-patient-level-costing/

3 | > 1. Introduction

information: the patient-level cost collection is vital to achieving this. We expect the

cost collection, coupled with the implementation of the Healthcare costing standards

for England, will:

• improve the quality and consistency of cost information available to the

service

• ensure organisations can understand their costs

• allow organisations to benchmark their costs against those of their peers.

Additional changes for October 2018

This document replaces previously issued guidance, we have added further

instructions for the collection. The main additions are:

• Updated scope of collection to account for the split Mental health and IAPT

submissions

• Updated collection extract files

• OUT033 added to Reconciliation tables

4 | > 2. Scope

2. Scope

2.1. In scope

Early implementers of the cost collection this year are asked to submit two separate

CTP PLICS costing returns if they provide the relevant services and are able to; the

first return is for activity and financial data for NHS mental health services, this

includes any qualified provider (AQP) and overseas reciprocal activity. The second

being Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) services. Activity and

costs should be reported for all:

Submission 1: Mental Health return

• hospital provider spells,2 including patients not discharged as at 31 March

2018

• care contacts,3 excluding contacts made with patients while providing

improving access to psychological therapies (IAPT) services.

Submission 2: Improving access to psychological therapies (IAPT) services return

• contacts made with patients while providing improving access to

psychological therapies (IAPT) services.

2.2. Out-of-scope services and reconciliation items

Services outside the scope of this collection should not be reported in the patient-

level cost collection extracts but should be costed and reported in the reconciliation

to ensure the correct total cost is generated. Table 1 and Table 5 below describe the

services out of scope for each submission. All the services listed in Table 1 must be

costed. However, only those services that fall under the own-patient care cost group

should be reported in the patient-level extracts. All other cost groups form part of the

reconciliation tables outlined in Section 7 below.

2 Total continuous stay of a patient using a hospital bed https://www.datadictionary.nhs.uk/data_dictionary/nhs_business_definitions/h/hospital_provider_spell_de.asp?shownav=1 3 A contact made with a PATIENT for the delivery of care https://www.datadictionary.nhs.uk/data_dictionary/classes/c/care_contact_de.asp?shownav=1

5 | > 2. Scope

• PLICS IAPT: IAPT services will be considered out of scope and excluded for

the Mental health return (OUT031) and

• PLICS MH: mental health services will be considered out of scope and

excluded for the IAPT return (OUT033).

6 | > 2. Scope

Table 1: Reporting services by cost group in the reconciliation (see Section 7 for information on reconciliation)

Cost groups Service description Reconciliation or patient-level

extracts

Own-patient care

All mental health NHS services in England not listed in any other cost group below, including:

• costs related to the provider’s own-patient

activity

• overseas (reciprocal) activity

Patient-level extracts

Own-patient care (out of scope)

• Learning disabilities

• Addictions and substance misuse

• Physical healthcare eg sexual health

• Private, overseas non-reciprocal and non-NHS

England patients (Wales, Scotland and Northern

Ireland)

• Any patients not thought to have a mental illness

eg:

― smoking cessation services

― some alternative therapy services

― some counselling services

• Learning disabilities and autism spectrum

disorder services provided only at a primary care

level

• Did not attends and cancelled contacts (activity

only)

• Group sessions4

• Contracted-out services

• Prison health services (physical healthcare only)

• Mental health specified services: acquired brain

injury and neuropsychiatry

• Named provider services: Fixated threat

assessment centre: Barnet, Enfield and

Haringey Mental Health NHS Trust

• Mental health services5

• IAPT services6

Reconciliation

4 Only group sessions that cannot be directly linked to each of the patients attending the group

session should be included: ie this excludes group therapy sessions for a number of registered patients, which should be reported as a care contact for each individual patient. 5 All Mental health services are excluded during the IAPT submission OUT033 6 All IAPT services are excluded during the Mental Health submission OUT031

7 | > 2. Scope

Cost groups Service description Reconciliation or patient-level

extracts

Other activities

• Activities contracted in from other providers, eg

psychiatric liaison services

• Out-of-area placements, both the receiving

provider and sending provider

Reconciliation

Reconciling items (no corresponding activity)

• Services with no patient-level activity captured Reconciliation

If the service is not listed in the own-patient care (out-of-scope) or other activities

cost group, the service is in scope for the PLICS Mental Health and PLICS IAPT

collections.

Collection year

The collection year begins on 1 April 2017 and ends on 31 March 2018. All hospital

provider spells and care contacts (including IAPT contacts) completed within the

collection year, or hospital provider spells still open at the end of the collection year,

are in scope of this collection.

Only resources used and activities undertaken within the collection year should be

included, regardless of when the hospital provider spell started or ended. For

example, only costed ward care bed days that are within the collection year should

be reported.

8 | > 2. Scope

Figure 1: In-scope spells and contacts

2.3. NHS Digital’s role and minimum datasets

NHS Digital

NHS Digital provides a range of services used by healthcare professionals, research

bodies, public sector organisations and commercial entities across England. NHS

Digital is experienced in specifying, acquiring and processing national data

collections.

For the CTP, NHS Improvement will request that NHS Digital establishes and

operates systems to collect patient-level costing information under Section 255 of the

Health and Social Care Act 2012.

The collection systems will be requested to:

• enable Trusts to submit patient-level costing information to NHS Digital in a

secure manner

• link patient-level costing information to the mental health services dataset

(MHSDS) or IAPT dataset (as applicable)

• conduct data validation and quality checks

• supply pseudonymised patient-level costing information to NHS

Improvement for onward data processing and analysis.

9 | > 2. Scope

Mental health services dataset (MHSDS)

MHSDS is a patient-level, output-based, secondary uses dataset that delivers

robust, comprehensive, nationally consistent and comparable person-based

information for children, young people and adults who are in contact with mental

health services.6

IAPT dataset

The IAPT dataset is a patient-level dataset for services that provides evidence-based

treatments for people over the age of 18 with anxiety and depression. IAPT services

for people under the age of 18 are recorded in MHSDS.

IAPT services are characterised by:

• evidenced-based psychological therapies

• routine outcome monitoring

• regular and outcomes-focused supervision.7

7 https://www.england.nhs.uk/mental-health/adults/iapt/

10 | > 3. Collection timetable

3. Collection timetable

Table 2 outlines the timetable for the mental health and IAPT PLICS collection for

2018.

Table 2: Timetable for mental health and IAPT PLICS cost collection

Date Description

January 2018 Minimum software requirements published

April 2018 Collection guidance and costing standards released

May 2018 Collection files with examples and data validation tool released

August 2018 Submission process released

19th-30th November 2018

Collection window*

December/January 2019

Collection feedback and lessons learned shared

* The submission windows for MH and IAPT costs are planned to run in parallel. There are

still some technical points NHS D and NHS I are working through which could potentially

affect the IAPT timeline. We will confirm participating trusts following consultation and legal

review of any change.

11 | > 4. Applying the Healthcare costing standards – mental health

4. Applying the Healthcare costing standards – mental health

The cost collection should be completed in line with the guidance in the Healthcare

costing standards – mental health.8 The standards specify how you should map

costs to resources and activities, and the allocation methods you should use.

Where the costing standards do not provide guidance on how to treat specific costs

for collection, see Section 6 in the first instance. If this does not resolve your

question, please email NHS Improvement’s costing team for clarification:

costing@improvement.nhs.uk.

https://www.england.nhs.uk/mental-health/adults/iapt/ s/approved-costing-guidance-standards/

12 | > 5. Information governance

5. Information governance

This section describes how the patient-level costing (mental health) dataset

(PLCMHDS) and patient-level costing (IAPT) dataset (PLCIADS) will be used.

5.1. Information governance

• The patient-level costing (mental health) dataset (PLCMHDS) contains unit

costs for inpatient admissions and care contacts for NHS providers in

England.

• The patient-level costing (IAPT) dataset (PLCIADS) contains unit costs for

IAPT contacts for NHS providers in England.

NHS Digital will collect the PLCMHDS and PLCIADS information from providers

(subject to NHS Digital accepting Mandatory Requests from NHS Improvement). We

expect that NHS Digital may publish and/or disseminate data collected and/or

created under those requests. This may include dissemination of data to other

organisations. The acceptance of the Mandatory Requests and any subsequent use

of PLCMHDS and/or PLCIADS data collected under those mandatory requests

would be subject to the appropriate information governance processes and approval.

If you have any questions or concerns about how the data will be used, please

contact us at costing@improvement.nhs.uk.

5.2. How NHS Improvement will use PLCMHDS and PLCIADS

MHSDS-PLCMHDS and IAPT-PLCIADS will be created by NHS Digital at NHS

Improvement’s request.

NHS Digital will:

1. Collect PLCMHDS and PLCIADS data from NHS providers,

2. Match these datasets with the MHSDS and IAPT datasets respectively,

3. Add key identifiers (to allow subsequent linkage of these datasets with

MHSDS and IAPT) and

13 | > 5. Information governance

4. Pseudonymise the data before the resultant data (MHSDS-PLCMHDS and

IAPT-PLCIADS) is provided to NHS Improvement.

We intend to use the MHSDS-PLCMHDS and IAPT-PLCIADS data in connection

with any of our pricing or other functions, including:9

• informing the national tariff

• producing and distributing patient-level data in our tools for NHS providers,

eg national PLICS portal and PLICS data quality tool10

• supporting efficiency and quality of care improvement programmes, eg

Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT)11 and operational productivity in NHS

providers

• informing and modelling new methods of pricing NHS services

• informing new approaches and other changes to currency design

• improving future cost collections

• informing the relationship between the provider costs and their patient

casemix

• developing analytical tools and reports to help providers improve their data

quality, identify operational and clinical efficiencies, and review and

challenge their patient-level cost data.

As well as sharing the MHSDS-PLCMHDS and IAPT-PLCIADS data within NHS

Improvement, we intend (subject to NHS Digital’s approval) to share pseudonymised

MHSDS-PLCMHDS and IAPT-PLCIADS patient-level data with participating trusts

and arm’s length bodies.

The benefits of sharing the pseudonymised MHSDS-PLCMHDS and IAPT-PLCIADS

patient-level data include:

• Across providers, it will support the implementation of integrated care

systems and organisations, as well as additional functionality in new

releases of our tools.

• For the Department of Health and Social Care, NHS England, NHS Digital

and other organisations and individuals, it will help to:

– identify operational and clinical efficiencies, eg NHS RightCare12

9See Section 70 of the Health and Social Care Act 2012. 10 https://improvement.nhs.uk/resources/tools-for-using-costing-data/ 11 http://gettingitrightfirsttime.co.uk/ 12 www.england.nhs.uk/rightcare/what-is-nhs-rightcare/

14 | > 5. Information governance

– provide comparative costs to support evaluation of new or innovative

medical technologies

– respond to Freedom of Information requests and parliamentary questions

– benchmark performance against other NHS and international providers

– inform academic research.

15 | > 6. Treatment of specific costs and services/ activities: additional guidance

6. Treatment of specific costs and services/ activities: additional guidance

6.1. Mental health clusters and hospital provider spells

Due to the nature and length of mental health hospital provider spells and clusters,

the reference cost collection expresses the costs of clusters in days rather than

complete hospital provider spells or on a complete cluster basis.

The 2017/18 mental health development cost collection collects costs based on an

incomplete cluster basis. However, the requirement for this collection is for hospital

provider spell costs to be reported against the relevant clusters. This may mean

allocating spell costs across multiple clusters when patients change cluster during

the collection year. Table 3 below provides an example of how a hospital provider

spell with multiple clusters would be reported in the collection.

Table 3: Hospital spell provider and cluster cost report

Hospital provider spell number

Cluster Patient-level costing collection activity identifier

Patient-level costing collection activity count

Patient-level costing collection resource identifier

Cost

151351531 99 WRD001 62 CPF022 1500.0263

151351531 99 WRD001 62 CPF002 1000.2065

151351531 99 WRD001 62 CPF024 300.5650

151351531 02 WRD001 22 CPF002 750.52605

151351531 02 WRD001 22 CPF024 480.56418

16 | > 6. Treatment of specific costs and services/ activities: additional guidance

6.2. Other operating income (non-patient-care activity)

The costing standards specify that income from non-patient care activity should only

be netted off against costs in a few scenarios. Netting off other operating income

against cost has been a key policy in the reference cost collection.

In 2018, NHS Improvement will be exploring the impact of removing non-patient care

costs from the national cost collection, through the collection of a memorandum item

on non-patient care activity in reference costs. A decision will be made this year on

the treatment of non-patient care activity in 2019 collections.

For the 2017/18 mental health development PLICS collection, providers must net off

the income for non-patient care activities, not costs. This includes income for

research activities and education and training.

6.3. Unmatched drug costs

Unmatched costs should not be reported separately. All unmatched costs should be

allocated to hospital provider spells and care contacts using matched activity.

Unmatched activity should be excluded from allocation methods so costs are

allocated to matched activity only, with the exception of activities from non-integrated

systems outlined in the costing standards.

6.4. Group sessions

Group sessions should be reported in the MHSDS care contacts feed at a patient

level per individual contact within the group. For example, group therapy sessions for

five patients should be reported as five care contacts for each patient using the

group session collection activity to identify that the contact was a group session.

Group sessions where the patients cannot be identified should be excluded from the

collection. All costs for the session should be reported in the reconciliation table for

service and cost exclusions (see Section 7 below).

6.5. Did not attends and cancelled contacts

Did not attends and cancelled appointments should not be costed for the PLICS

mental health development cost collection. The costs need to form part of your

attended care contacts.

17 | > 6. Treatment of specific costs and services/ activities: additional guidance

6.6. Out-of-area placements

Out-of-area placements (OAPs) are where patients are sent out of area because no

bed is available for them locally, which can delay their recovery.13

There is a data collection for OAPs to understand where and why they are

happening. Findings from the data collection show 95% of organisations in scope are

participating in the collection.

In 2018, we will be undertaking a review of out-of-area placements. We want to

understand how best to cost and report OAPs, using learning from the OAP dataset.

For 2017/18, OAPs activity and costs must be excluded from the patient-level

extracts and reported in the reconciliation tables only. This includes activity and

costs from the sender and receiver of OAPs.

6.7. Resource and activities

This section describes the resources and activities you should use to report costs for

this collection. For more details on resources and activities see Healthcare costing

standards – mental health.14

Spreadsheets CC.2 and CC.3 in the mental health costing standards technical

document respectively contain a list of the resources and activities for collection. A

resource activity matrix is included in Spreadsheet CC.4 to show the expected

combinations for collection. However, other combinations of resources and activities

will be accepted for this collection.

Spreadsheet CP2.1 in the technical document maps the standardised cost ledger to

the cost collection resources. This should assist you with your cost classifications for

the PLICS collection. If you have combinations that do not appear in Spreadsheet

CC.4, or costs in your ledger that are not represented in Spreadsheet CP2.1, please

email us at costing@improvement.nhs.uk to discuss.

Spreadsheet CP3.2 shows how to group local activities in the costing standards to

produce the collection activities.

13 http://digital.nhs.uk/media/31482/Out-of-Area-Placements-OAPs-May-2017-Report/default/oaps-rep-may-2017 14 https://improvement.nhs.uk/resources/approved-costing-guidance-standards/

18 | > 7. Reconciliation tables

7. Reconciliation tables

Reconciliation forms an important part of the submission files. The reconciliation

tables shown in this section help to establish the total costs covered by PLICS from

your final audited accounts. The two reconciliation tables are:

• final audited accounts

• service and cost exclusions table.

7.1. Final audited accounts

The final audited accounts table has been constructed to align to the top half of the

reference costs reconciliation.

This table should reconcile to your audited accounts. See the National cost collection

guidance15 for more information on what figures should populate the lines in this

table.

All your organisation’s costs as well as other operating income and gains should be

reported in the final audited accounts table (see Table 4 below). Contact us at

costing@improvement.nhs.uk to discuss the treatment of rare items or if you are

unsure how to report some costs.

15 https://improvement.nhs.uk/resources/approved-costing-guidance-collections/

19 | > 7. Reconciliation tables

Table 4: Final audited accounts reconciliation

7.2. Service and cost exclusion table

The service and cost exclusion table provides a breakdown of the reconciling items,

other activities and own-patient care services that are outside the collection’s scope.

This gives transparency to the services provided and validates whether all services

are costed and the correct services are removed from the quantum.

20 | > 7. Reconciliation tables

This table has been aligned to the second half of the reference cost reconciliation.

The reference cost reconciliation line number is provided to show where the value is

the same. Please see Section 19 of the National cost collection guidance16 for more

detail on services to be excluded.

In addition to the reference cost exclusions, some services outlined in Section 2

above are excluded from PLICS but included in reference costs. The cost for the

following services should be reported using ID OUT31 in the reconciliation:

• community (physical health)

• group sessions17

• addictions and substance misuse

• out-of-area placements (receiving provider)

• out-of-area placements (sending provider)

• any patients not thought to have a mental illness (and not reported as

community physical health) eg:

– smoking cessation services

– alternative therapy services (acupuncture, aromatherapy etc)

– some counselling services

• learning disabilities and autism spectrum disorder services provided only at a

primary care level (if not reported under line 28w, see Table 5 below)

• any other services (no patient-level activity available).

Table 5 and 6 below lists the out-of-scope services and costs. If you are unsure

where to report some of your services, contact us at costing@improvement.nhs.uk.

16 https://improvement.nhs.uk/resources/approved-costing-guidance-collections/ 17 Only group sessions that cannot be directly linked to each of the patients attending the group session should be included: ie this excludes group therapy sessions for a number of registered patients, which should be reported as a care contact for each individual patient.

21 | > 7. Reconciliation tables

Table 5: Mental Health Submission - Service and cost exclusions

Table 6: IAPT Submission - Service and cost exclusions

Line number in reference cost workbookService ID Description Expected sign

28a OUT004 Ambulance trusts - specified services -

28b OUT006 Cystic Fibrosis Drugs -

28c OUT007 Discrete External Aids And Appliances -

28d OUT022 Device Costs on the National Tariff High Cost Devices List -

28e OUT023 Health promotion programmes: Contraception and sexual health -

28f OUT024 Health promotion programmes: Oral health promotion -

28g OUT025 Health promotion programmes: Stop smoking education programme -

28h OUT026 Health promotion programmes: Substance misuse -

28i OUT027 Health promotion programmes: Weight management -

28j OUT028 Health promotion programmes: Other health promotion programme -

28k OUT029 Home delivery of drugs and supplies: administration and associated costs -

28l OUT008 Home delivery of drugs and supplies: drugs, supplies and associated costs -

28m OUT009 Hospital travel costs scheme -

28n OUT021 In vitro fertilisation (IVF) drugs -

28o OUT010 Learning disability services -

28p OUT020 Local Improvement Finance Trust (LIFT) and Private Finance Initiative (PFI) set up costs -

28q OUT005 Mental health trusts - specified services -

28r OUT011 Named providers - specified services -

28s OUT012

NHS continuing healthcare, NHS-funded nursing care and excluded intermediate care for

individuals aged 18 or over -

28t OUT013 NHS continuing healthcare, NHS-funded nursing care for children -

28u OUT014 Patient transport services (PTS) -

28v OUT015 Pooled or unified budgets -

28w OUT016 Primary medical services -

28x OUT017 Prison health services -

28y OUT018 Screening programmes -

28z OUT019 Specified hosted services -

29aa OUT003 Actual cost of non-NHS private patients -

29ab OUT001 Actual cost of non-NHS overseas patients (non-reciprocal) -

29ac OUT002 Actual cost of other non-NHS patients -

29ad OUT030 Contracted out patient activity -

n/a OUT031 Services excluded from PLICS but included in reference costs -

Line number in reference cost workbookService ID Description Expected sign

28a OUT004 Ambulance trusts - specified services -

28b OUT006 Cystic Fibrosis Drugs -

28c OUT007 Discrete External Aids And Appliances -

28d OUT022 Device Costs on the National Tariff High Cost Devices List -

28e OUT023 Health promotion programmes: Contraception and sexual health -

28f OUT024 Health promotion programmes: Oral health promotion -

28g OUT025 Health promotion programmes: Stop smoking education programme -

28h OUT026 Health promotion programmes: Substance misuse -

28i OUT027 Health promotion programmes: Weight management -

28j OUT028 Health promotion programmes: Other health promotion programme -

28k OUT029 Home delivery of drugs and supplies: administration and associated costs -

28l OUT008 Home delivery of drugs and supplies: drugs, supplies and associated costs -

28m OUT009 Hospital travel costs scheme -

28n OUT021 In vitro fertilisation (IVF) drugs -

28o OUT010 Learning disability services -

28p OUT020 Local Improvement Finance Trust (LIFT) and Private Finance Initiative (PFI) set up costs -

28q OUT005 Mental health trusts - specified services -

28r OUT011 Named providers - specified services -

28s OUT012

NHS continuing healthcare, NHS-funded nursing care and excluded intermediate care for

individuals aged 18 or over -

28t OUT013 NHS continuing healthcare, NHS-funded nursing care for children -

28u OUT014 Patient transport services (PTS) -

28v OUT015 Pooled or unified budgets -

28w OUT016 Primary medical services -

28x OUT017 Prison health services -

28y OUT018 Screening programmes -

28z OUT019 Specified hosted services -

29aa OUT003 Actual cost of non-NHS private patients -

29ab OUT001 Actual cost of non-NHS overseas patients (non-reciprocal) -

29ac OUT002 Actual cost of other non-NHS patients -

29ad OUT030 Contracted out patient activity -

n/a OUT033 Mental health services excluded from IAPT PLICS but included in reference costs -

22 | > 8. Collection extract files – overview

8. Collection extract files – overview

This section details the requirements for the patient-level extracts to be submitted to

NHS Digital. We will issue providers with a data validation tool in October 2018. This

will validate costing outputs and produce the required XML files to be transferred to

NHS Digital if required. The tool will process CSV or XML files, perform data

validations, and generate and compress XML files ready for submission. The

validation tool:

• ensures that data is in the correct format (XML) for submission, reducing the

likelihood of resubmission

• allows providers to validate data and correct any issues, if needed, before

submitting data to NHS Digital

• reduces the burden on software suppliers to create and validate XML files

• removes the need for manual compression of files.

Providers must check their output files in the data validation tool before submission

to NHS Digital.

8.1. File specification and data fields

This section details the file format and data fields for the submission to NHS Digital.

The output file must conform to the standard specified in the collection specification

files. The extract specification files will be released in May.

Files sent to NHS Digital must be in XML format. To reduce the burden on providers

and suppliers, the data validation tool converts CSV files into XML and runs the

collection data validations. Alternatively, if providers can produce XML files, the tool

can be used to run the collection data validations and file compression only.

We will provide example CSV and XML extract files in October to support file

creation.

With the inclusion of resources and activities, the collection XML becomes multi-

tiered:

23 | > 8. Collection extract files – overview

• spell/contact (level 1)

• collection activities (level 2)

• collection resources (level 3).

However, the hierarchy cannot be built in the CSV files as they are flat files – the

patient details repeat for each combination of resources and activities.

If you have any questions about the file specification, please contact us at

costing@improvement.nhs.uk.

8.2. File batching process

The file batching process has been designed to future-proof the collection and to

support monthly, quarterly and annual reporting. It will also ensure the file transfer

process can upload the large data files produced by the new costing method.

The submission files need to be batched in two steps:

1. Group the data into datasets: MH care contacts, MH hospital provider spells

and IAPT (care contacts).

2. Split each dataset into 12 months using Care contact date (care contact),

Discharge date (hospital provider spell) and Appointment date (IAPT).

Hospital provider spells must only be reported in the month of discharge to

prevent duplication, except where the hospital provider spell is incomplete at

the end of the collection year. Please include these records in the M12 file

with the costs that relate to the collection year only.

The only exception to batching is for the reconciliation dataset, which is grouped into

one file per collection type (i.e. one REC file for mental health services and one

REC file for Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) services).

8.3. Extract file name convention

Table 7 outlines the file-naming convention and gives examples. If the file names do

not follow this convention, the submission will fail.

24 | > 8. Collection extract files – overview

Table 7: File name convention

Field name CSV/XML field name

Description

Patient-level costing care activity type code

FeedType The dataset the extract covers: (MHPS = Hospital provider spells, MHREC = Reconciliation, MHCC = Care contacts, IAPT = IAPT) IAPTREC = Reconciliation

Financial year FinYr

The financial year the extract covers i.e. for 2017-18 the value would be FY2017-18

Financial month (not for REC file)

Fin MTh The month the extract covers within the financial year:

M## = the month in the financial year

M01 = April 2017 M02 = May M03 = June M04 = July M05 = August M06 = September M07 = October M08 = November M09 = December M10 = January M11 = February M12 = March 2018

Organisation identifier (code of submitting organisation)

OrgSubmittingID Organisation identifier (Code of submitting organisation) is the organisation identifier of the organisation acting as the physical sender of a data set submission. The Organisation code provided must be in the 3 character format (XXX) is the main code of the provider

Date and time dataset created

CreateDateTime The date and time the extract was created Format to be used: CCYYMMDDThhmm

Examples of correctly named files:

• Patient level costing care activity type code _ Financial year _Financial

month_ Organisation identifier (Code of submitting organisation) _ Date and

time data set created

• MHPS_FY2017-18_M01_XXX_20180701T1730.csv or

MHREC_FY2017-18_XXX_20180701T1730.xml

• IAPT_FY2017-18_M01_XXX_20170701T1730.csv or

IAPTREC_FY2017-18_M01_XXX_20170701T1730.xml

25 | > 8. Collection extract files – overview

8.4. Collection process overview

We are working with NHS Digital to finalise the submission process. We will send

guidance to providers and suppliers in September / October. This will include:

• a data validation tool

• file transfer set-up and process

• submission process – an outline from start to finish.

© NHS Improvement 2018 Publication code: CG 60/18

Contact us:

costing@improvement.nhs.uk

NHS Improvement

Wellington House

133-155 Waterloo Road

London

SE1 8UG

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