Pathway Analytics

The stakeholder event to feedback findings from the sexual health tariff road test in South Central will be on Wednesday afternoon, 24th October, in Newbury.  

We are delighted that Andrea Duncan, Sexual Health Programme Manager from the Department of Health and Justine Womack from Public Health England Transistion team will be joining us to update on national policy, share current thinking and to take part in the discussions.

The event will also cover feedback from the road test themes of awareness, accessibility and affordability. There will be an opportunity to discuss your experiences of the road test - from how easy or difficult it has been to return your data to how reflective you think the currencies and prices are of your service provision. We hope that you and your colleagues are able to attend.

To register your place at the workshop, please download the form below and email to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it asap.

The programme can be downloaded below.  Please join us for lunch from 12.30pm.  The workshop will begin at 1.15pm

Venue details: Isis Room, NHS South of England, Rivergate House, Newbury Business Park, London Road, Newbury, Berkshire, RG14 2PZ

We look forward to seeing you next week.

Thank you to all the stakeholders who have participated in the sexual health tariff road test. The level of engagement across the region has been exceptional and we hope that everyone has gained something from the process no matter how small. 

The findings, presented at an event in Manchester in May highlighted the following key points

- the majority of stakeholders found the road test interesting and their expectations had been met, although some had found it challenging and frustrating at times
- the pathways and currencies make sense and are applicable to NW services but there are some missing pathways that need to be worked up
- closer scrutiny of some tariff input costs is necessary to ensure they are reflective of the NW
- 30 out of 32 organisations submitted data to the grouper
- 101 months of data were received in total, covering almost half a million records of activity
- the financial impact is unlikely to be giving a true picture at the minute as more assurance is needed that all activity has been captured and coded.  The position is likely to change as data quality improves

Next steps 

- providers to return further data to the grouper with goal of six months data per provider

- commissioners to revise current spend figures if necessary

- impact assessment to be refreshed early Autumn 

The slide pack from the Stakeholder day has been corrected and updated based on your comments.  It can be downloaded below

If you have any questions about the road test or what happens next, please contact your local lead.

Thanks to everyone who attended the stakeholder event on Monday 21 May.  

As discussed, the data from the impact assessment requires local sense checking for accuracy and completeness.  The slides are available to download below.  

For provider activity data uploaded into the grouper, please check the following to sense-check that the data you are submitting is reflective of the activity of your service:

–Primary attendances triggered should broadly equate to the number of patients that you saw during the period.  Does this number reflect the number of patients your services sees over the period?

–View the currently profile (case mix). Does the proportion of services reflected feel broadly inline with the services you deliver?  (E.g. If you are an SRH service expect a large proportion of SRH Standard, if you are a GUM service expect a large proportion of T4)

-Make sure that data is submitted in one month units. for example, if you are submitting 3 months of data there should be three submissions, one for each month.

If you want to re-submit the data to the grouper, please email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it and we will delete your previous submission so that you can re-submit.

For commissioner data - you can review your online submission and correct any errors by clicking 'as is spend questionnaire'.

Any corrections or amendments must be returned no later than Tuesday 29 May for inclusion in the final version. 

Thank you!

An Impact Assessment should let you know the financial impact of introducing tariff to your services.  The assessment will vary slightly if you are a Provider or a Commissioner.  In general, the Tariff prices represent the total cost of delivering a service from the ground up, including all the hidden costs.

Commissioner View

The budget for a service may not always explicitly include all the service costs, for example there may be some parts of the service that are delivered by a wider block contract (eg pathology) or some parts of the service may simply not be costed at all (eg facilities and estates).

When you are charged a tariff for the service, the tariff will include all these extra hidden costs, so it is important to understand what they are when you do your impact assessment.

GUM services are charged under tariff at the moment so their charge can be easily arrived at from GUMAMM data.

To cost your existing service you need to list the annual cost of the following:

• GUM services with MFF applied
• all the contracts you are currently commissioning
• estimate the proportion of any block contracts due to sexual health services
• all the services sexual health are consuming but not paying for in the current sexual health budget
• any other departmental overhead you are being charged
• any PCT overhead you are being charged
• if you share contracts with other PCTs estimate the proportion due to your PCT based on activity

 

This should provide your As-Is spend.  We will be asking you to input this figure into the Grouper.

As your providers submit data to the Grouper, the Grouper will start to estimate your annual spend, compare this to the figure above.  

The Grouper will not include GUM activity from sites that are not on Tariff, so there will still be a residual GUM tariff spend predominantly coming from Providers outside London, so be aware of this as a risk.  In most cases this will be very modest.

You may wish to do this analysis on a clinic by clinic basis.  

You will now be in a good position to discuss budget adjustments with you finance team and providers.  It may be appropriate where you currently pay for pathology under a wider block contract to discuss with your provider negotiating the supply of pathology as a deductible from tariff.  Also think about discussing it with your wider commissioning network.

Provider View

The first thing to state is that the tariff does not represent your department budget.  Most providers will allocate funds to departments based on a wide range of criteria, not necessarily representative of the revenue earned by that department.

Your existing service budget may or may not already include all the service costs accounted for in the tariff, for example there may be some parts of the service that are delivered by a wider block contract (eg pathology) or some parts of the service may simply not be costed at all (eg facilities and estates).

When you charge a tariff for the service, the tariff will include all these extra hidden costs, so it is important to understand what they are when you do your impact assessment.

GUM services are charged under tariff at the moment so their charge can be easily arrived at from GUMAMM data.

To cost your existing service you need to list the annual revenue and costs from the following:

• revenue from GUM services with your MFF applied
• revenue from all the sexual health contracts you are currently providing
• estimate the proportion of any block contract costs due to sexual health services
• the cost of all the services sexual health are providing but not paying for in the current sexual health budget
• the cost of any other departmental overhead you are being charged
• the cost of any wider management overheads you are being charged

 

This should provide your net As-Is revenue.

As you submit data to the Grouper, the Grouper will start to estimate your annual revenue, replace the total revenue figure from the above list and compare the net revenue.

You may wish to do this analysis on a clinic by clinic basis.

You should be aware that under tariff providers will carry the risk of badly coded activity, in some cases this is a substantial risk.