Question: Are the tariffs intended to be the same for level 2 and 3 services and for private providers, bearing in mind that the training overheads, travel etc may be much greater for level 3 services?
Answer: The currency prices are all designed to be 'setting-independent', whatever the setting and whoever delivers the service. They assume an appropriate standard of service is delivered including clinical governance.
They assume that in order to deliver an acceptable standard of service a certain amount of resource is spent on 'sitting in' training (a clinician training a colleague during a consultation).
Where services deliver more training (eg because they are a training hospital) then there are other funds available to draw on to cover those specific extra costs.
Where a commissioner agrees with a provider that extra training is desirable to sustain the overall service then a local agreement could be entered into to cover that.
We have tried to price the training required to maintain an acceptable standard of service. The cost of a clinician's professional training and continued professional development is accounted for in the cost of the 'clinical time available' for that band of clinician.