Data Management

A critical element to implementing a successful tariff is an authoritative measurement mechanism for triggering payments. Care providers were already suffering under a data reporting burden that was not designed to directly benefit either their service or service commissioning. Commissioners would typically receive a summary sheet stating the number of patients seen for various high-level descriptions of care some time after year-end.

Data collection is one half of the data management process and, in most cases, this is managed by a patient level data collection system deployed down to each clinic and used by clinicians during the patient consultation. The second part is the data reporting for tariff and this is usually done by a data manager who is often also an administrator or clinician. So any additional burden in this area would need to be minimised.