A source at a data management service revealed that third quarter data was due in April but had been delayed by ‘various data quality issues’.

Teething problems

It has emerged that some trusts have experienced problems in submitting statistics since the data collection hub – the NHS-wide clearing system – was replaced with the secondary uses service at the end of December.

This appears to have caused delays in the processing of the first statistics extracts because some hospital patient administration systems have been incompatible with new software, meaning some extracts are missing from the latest dataset.

Paul Robinson, external relations manager of independent health service information provider CHKS, said he knew of trusts that had experienced this problem.

Others, he said, had faced delays because they were waiting for new third party software to be accredited. An information manager confirmed this was the case at his Midlands trust and said that the hospital had supplied its episode statistics direct to its PCT, bypassing the secondary uses service, to avoid further delays.

Data duplication

Mr Robinson also said he was aware of some hospitals submitting data under both old and new PCT codes, resulting in duplication of records. ‘Even if the data is published now it is still significantly out of date information to be basing benchmarking on,’ he added.

Dr Paul Aylin, assistant director of the Dr Foster unit at Imperial College London, said: ‘We have certainly heard there are some issues with the third quarter data.

‘If you’re missing records this will impact on benchmarking and payment by results. If you don’t have up-to-date information then the whole issue of charging becomes difficult.’

Information Centre for health and social care operations director Roger Dewhurst admitted: ‘A minority of NHS organisations have had difficulties in submitting the necessary data over the last few months.

‘As a result of the reorganisation of PCTs in October last year, some organisations used incorrect PCT codes to correct previously submitted data. This resulted in a higher number of duplicate patient activity than usual. These have been removed from quarter three statistics and organisations are correcting this through re-submissions.’

Organisations will be able to correct any inaccuracies until mid-June before the final set of annual data is published later this year, Mr Dewhurst added.

From:
http://www.hsj.co.uk/healthservicejournal/pages/N1/p9/070607

The shambles that is Payment by Results was posted by Health Direct on March 01, 2007 in Why the NHS finances will never add up under bliar’s crooked books

A short letter published in the Telegraph this week highlighted the contradiction inherent in the Government’s attempts to improve the cost-effectiveness of the NHS. NHS hospital surgery is paid for on an ill thought out tariff basis that could cripple the health service.

Every price for every procedure on the list is a guesstimate. No one in the whole system can say for certain that the price hospitals charge a PCT for work has any relation to the real cost of that procedure. In the majority of cases, it is simply wrong.

The debate on whether labour’s Payments by Results (PbR) ended on 30 Oct 06 when Health Direct highlighted that PbR Payment by Results are fundamentally flawed says Clinical Coding chief

The current system of Payment by Results (PbR) is ‘fundamentally flawed and unacceptable’ the head of the Professional Association of Clinical Coders warned last week. Managing director Sue Eve-Jones told an HSJ conference last week that the quality of data in the NHS could compromise any chances of ensuring fairness under PbR.

Her presentation was subtitled ‘doing the best we can with a fundamentally flawed and unacceptable system’.

And Ms Eve-Jones concluded that the NHS payments system ‘scares me witless’. ‘It’s like going into Tesco, filling up your basket, and getting charged different prices depending on which checkout you go to.’