For several years we have been working on how to utilise the national cost collection data publication (also known as reference costs) at https://www.england.nhs.uk/costing-in-the-nhs/national-cost-collection/ and identify potential opportunities to treat more patients with the same money (or spend less).
Utilising a novel and automated approach to generating peers every potential opportunity is identified at quite a detailed level allowing for specific and focussed discussions on if services can be changed.
As the opportunies come with a minimum number of selected peers then, following an internal discussion as to whether the submitted unit costs and activity look right, the next step is to use the NHS PLICS Portal to compare the provider with their peers at a very detailed level.
We have an "onboarding" process to help make the most of the tool and not waste time. The first step is to watch this 18 minute webinar and read this 3 page document:
The below illustrates (for 2024/25) how the selected provider has a £3.5m a year opportunity re HN22 Very Major Knee Procedures if they could match the average unit cost of their 15 elective orthopaedic non-trauma procedure peers. This could increase further if they could match the more efficient subset of their peers.
The online tool shows you the peers specifically for this elective HN22 opportunity:
Whilst browsing through the opportunities online might suit you, there is also the option of exporting the information to excel so you can re-format it however would best suit the target audience:
In line with how NHS England publishes the source information on the www.future.nhs.uk website, it requires a username and password to be able to access the tool and then all activity information is published at a higher level than the raw data source and is subject to small number suppression where less than 7 units (although the ICO has confirmed this should be less than 5 units).
