Implementation

The principles for implementation are:

• The delivery of care should not be altered
• The reporting of data to HPA and DH should not be affected

There are two technical stages in implementing the Integrated Sexual Health Tariff experienced by a service provider:

• Preparation – A one-off activity where the data collection systems are updated to include the Tariff ‘Local Codes’ and training of clinical staff in the behavioural guidance on how to use those codes.
• Reporting – The collation and delivery of data reports six weeks after month end and extraction of the calculated tariff charges.

Preparation

1. Brief clinicians - on the use of local codes and refresh their coding guidance.
2. PLICS - set-up local codes on patient level information collection systems
3. Subscribe - to the Integrated Sexual Health Tariff Grouper

Reporting

4. Collate - six weeks after month end collate patient level data in GUMCAD and SHRAD reports
5. Prepare Tariff Dataset from your PLICS reports.
6. Calculate - upload data to the Integrated Sexual Health Tariff Grouper, validate and Submit

The Grouper returns a detailed report of the charges being raised to each commissioner from each provider.
Once these are in place, it is possible to run the Integrated Sexual Health Tariff in Shadow over a period of time to identify it’s clinical, financial and technical impact before a decision is made to migrate contracts to Tariff charging. The migration process is then a procedural one to raise the appropriate commissioning notices with providers and then start to charge using the Integrated Tariff. During the shadow process commissioners can review the Tariff data and Shadow charges raised.

Provider data managers are supported in the implementation process through a series of Workshops and online support. If necessary this can be augmented with desktop sharing sessions. On the whole, response from providers has been positive that once they have successfully uploaded data once, subsequent uploads are easy. However, the process does highlight any data collection issues they may have that were not previously evident. It does usually take three months for a provider to bring their clinical data collection process up the desired standard. This should have the added benefit of improving the HPA’s GUMCAD data.