Event / Costing conference 2021
About this event
The Institute’s annual costing conference provided the NHS with the latest developments and guidance in NHS costing, as well as increasing awareness of the collaborative approach needed to truly harness the power of data. The day included interactive workshops, case study examples and policy updates.
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Chris and Helen will give an overview of current costing work and the proposed future direction.
Shyam and Katie will share details of the workforce-activity model which explores the relationship between workforce and activity using the national PLICS dataset. The analysis helps to improve understanding of the proportion of staff time spent at each point of delivery broken down by clinical service lines. The model provides high-level workforce-activity ratios for four staff groups including consultants, other doctors, nursing and Scientific, Therapeutic and Technical (ST&T) staff to support recovery planning and also aids operational and workforce planning by ensuring consistency of submitted plans.
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The HFMA Costing Award 2020 winners will share details of the work at the trust to improve data quality and raise awareness about the importance of costing using their PLICS board game. As they developed costing within the trust they have expanded the scope to work with other sectors in the region and will be joined by Christian from Cornwall Partnership NHS FT to talk about costing beyond organisational boundaries.
This session will look at some of the issues which costing staff have faced over the last year, discuss what costing teams have been able to do to support their organisations during COVID and look at what the future holds as we return to some form of normality.
Many healthcare decisions involve a trade off in the value equation – balancing improved quality of care with increased costs. But what about when clinical information shows poor outcomes for many patients, and PLICS shows that the clinical issue is costing millions of pounds a year? In these circumstances both sides of the equation can be improved. In this session the HFMA 2020 Value and Innovation Award winners will tell the story of how their clinical research team proved that their age specific Paediatric Early Warning Score, combined with cutting edge technology and improved clinical protocols, significantly reduced the number of unplanned transfers to critical care. They will explain how this was supported by their dedicated Children’s Healthcare Innovation Centre including a novel use for PLICS data – that costing teams everywhere can copy for the benefit of their trusts’ patients and finances.
Gerri Sefton, Lead Investigator and Advanced Nurse Practitioner, Alder Hey Children’s NHS FT
The costing team at Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust have produced a five-year costing and benchmarking strategic plan to guide the development of costing at the trust. The document sets out their intentions on a number of areas including improving clinical engagement, embedding PLICS into routine finance processes, introducing service line reporting and supporting population health management. In this session, Jenny will talk about the process of developing the document, the challenges they have faced with implementation during a pandemic and the steps they have put in place to achieve their strategic plan.
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Data literacy is a critical skill for all NHS staff in the 21st century. How do we make sure as ‘data translators’ that we are able to communicate our data effectively to our decision makers? In this session Ella will provide an overview of what data literacy means and demonstrate how data visualisation plays a crucial part. The session will look at what a data driven organisation looks like and how you embed a data focus into the organisation’s culture.
Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust has always recognised the potential of PLICS beyond simply creating costed patient episodes. They have gradually expanded the use of both costing and activity data through innovative collaborations
with a wide range of clinical services and have used the wealth of data at their disposal to support services to identify opportunity and waste. This session will explore the approach being taken in Nottingham to use patient-level data to support QI projects, waste reduction and reducing harm to patients. Joanna and Scott will share details of their approach and how they are using data to track the effectiveness of projects with a focus on reducing waste and improving processes through a QI lens. They are also now working to join up patient data across the whole system and although it is early days, they are already in conversation with community service providers as well as GP practices and have started to discuss how the Nottingham WAVE process can be expanded across the ICS.
Joanna O’Brien, Deputy Director of Finance - Financial Recovery and Sustainability and Scott Hodgson – Head of Costing, Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust
The mandation of PLICS for mental health and now community services means that data quality has become a pressing issue. The recent Institute briefing Costing and data quality: improving the quality of non-financial data required for costing noted the significant challenges costing practitioners face when costing community and mental health services. The current lack of robust activity data for both sectors means that healthcare systems will struggle to understand the use of resources across patient pathways. This workshop will explore what the key challenges are and start to explore possible solutions. The interactive session will give delegates the opportunity to share their ideas and take part in the discussion and the output will be published as an Institute briefing.
Fiona Boyle, NHS England and NHS Improvement and Lori Edwards Suarez, Clinical Analyst, Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS FT
Following a recent survey of NHS organisations, the team at LOGEX identified a number of potential areas where improvement is possible. One of the areas brought to light by the survey was that a significant portion of NHS Trusts don’t have access to benchmark information and even where they do, it is not always used effectively. They believe this area holds great potential for performance improvement. In the battle to control costs and improve operational performance, the ability to identify, share and then implement performance improvement opportunities fast is essential. In this session, Martijn and Scott will demonstrate and discuss how costing practitioners can improve internal engagement, identify context for to help interpret local costing outputs and compare the internal and external view of the trust’s costing position using analytics, benchmarking and reporting.
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Related content
This event is for those that will benefit from an overview of costing in the NHS or those new to costing and will cover why we cost and the processes.
This event focused primarily on the use of costing information and the importance of working with others to turn data into business intelligence.