Case study / Using PLICS to drive value in mental health services

Providers of NHS services have increasingly large amounts of data about their service users and patients, with the roll-out of patient-level costing (PLICS) across the NHS. The challenge is how to make the most of PLICS data to support improvements in patient care and deliver efficiencies. What is clear is the importance of clinicians and finance staff working more closely together to support improvements in value.

Having implemented PLICS for their mental health services in 2014/15, the costing team at North Staffordshire Combined Healthcare NHS Trust has worked hard to turn the large amounts of data generated by PLICS into information which is useful for clinical and operational services. They have developed inhouse an information dashboard, which clinical teams are starting to use to identify opportunities for service improvement. Data is presented in a user-friendly way which is easy to understand and is tailored to the needs of different services. Recent developments include mapping service user pathways, and linking these to patient outcomes.

This case study describes the mental health dashboard and gives a range of practical examples of how the dashboard is being used by services to drive value.