News / Training tariff gets green light

The Department of Health is to introduce tariffs for undergraduate medical placements in secondary care and non-medical placements from next month, but will limit losses to avoid destabilising providers.

Tariffs for postgraduate medical placements in secondary care will be implemented in April 2014.

No provider should lose funding greater than 0.25% of their total provider income, or £2m if that is a lower sum, in any year, the Department said. There will be a 12-year transition to the full tariff. But the majority of gains can be paid by year six, it added.

An analysis of the impact of the system said the tariff for undergraduate medical placements in secondary care will be £34,623, non-medical placements £3,175, and postgraduate medical placements in secondary care paid at 50% of trainees’ basic salary plus placement fee of £12,400. All tariffs will be adjusted by the market forces factor.

Based on 2011/12 education and training levels, most providers will gain from the implementation of the tariffs – 268 will benefit, 91 lose. Overall, it will be cost neutral, though there will be a small cost for implementation (£16m in the first year, £8m in year two).

The new tariffs are based on a 2008 costing sample that suggested there was cross-subsidisation between service (patient care) and undergraduate medical education and non-medical placements. The Department said that it aimed to reduce this by collecting education and training costs as part of the annual reference cost collection, starting in 2013/14, which would be the basis of the 2016/17 tariffs.