23.11.15
Monitor signals move to multi-year tariff from 2017-18
Monitor’s Joint Pricing Executive has recommended a move to a multi-year tariff from 2017-18.
A paper to be presented at the regulator’s board meeting this week says the team have “started planning and production” of guidance on the planned changes.
They are working on the transition path to the payment approaches set out in ‘Reforming the payment system for NHS services: supporting the Five Year Forward View’.
Toby Lambert, director of pricing at Monitor, wrote that the “aim is to provide the forward guidance on the National Tariff as part of the planning guidance to CCGs in December 2015”.
Jim Mackey, chief executive designate of NHS Improvement, recently told the NHS Providers Conference that he hoped to secure a good settlement in this week’s Spending Review and push for multi-year tariffs.
After last week’s disappointing financial performance figures, which revealed the NHS had racked up a £1.6bn half-year deficit, Mackey said: “The new measures we are putting in place will mean that providers have a better chance of improving their financial position throughout the remainder of this year.
“However it is clear – especially as we see the majority of providers now struggling with their financial situation – that the national tariff for next year will need to be set at a level that will create the conditions where NHS trusts and FTs can begin to plan to bring themselves back into financial balance, which will enable them to focus on what matters to patients: improving care.”
Phillippa Henstch, policy advisor for funding and resources at NHS Providers, recently urged the Department of Health and national bodies to provide greater assurances about how the sector will be meaningfully involved in negotiation, consultation and engagement on the national tariff in the future.
“This, rather than changing the objection mechanism, would have done so much to build bridges with the provider sector that are so desperately needed,” she wrote.