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Case study / Improving patient-level costing in community services – Gloucestershire Health and Care NHS Foundation Trust

08 February 2021
1 CPD hour

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Costing has a major role to play in supporting the delivery of sustainable services across the NHS. It should underpin decision-making, ensuring local decisions made by clinical teams are informed by a clear understanding of current costs and the likely costs of new ways of working. Good cost and activity data at the patient level can help health economies to understand variations in care between different patients, helping to optimise service delivery.

Robust cost data for acute, mental health, ambulance and community services is crucial to delivering the right care to the right patient in the right place.

There is therefore a compelling need for robust patient-level costing (PLICS) data for community services, where there are significant challenges with data quality and the lack of a robust set of currencies.

The costing team at Gloucestershire Health and Care NHS Foundation Trust has been proactive in driving improvements in the collection and interpretation of data on the use of community services in the county.  Key to their success has been the engagement of clinical colleagues to review and improve the quality and extent of patient data, which has led to a better understanding of service delivery.

Gloucestershire Health and Care NHS Foundation Trust won the 2019 HFMA Costing Award for its work in improving costing in community services.  This case study describes the work done by the trust to improve the information available to the trust about the costs and profile of the community services delivered to patients.

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