Publication, Part of Patient Level Activity and Costing
Patient Level Activity and Costing, 2021-22
Experimental statistics, Official statistics in development
Summary
NHS England and NHS Digital merged on 1 February 2023, details of the merger are included in the related links below. Processes for the 2021-22 PLICS collection occurred prior to the merger date, as such references to both organisations are made within the report to distinguish between team responsibilities during the collection period.
This report presents analysis of patient-level activity and costing data for acute, mental health, community, and ambulance activity in 2021-22 submitted to the Patient Level Information and Costing System (PLICS) data collection by NHS providers in England.
The report contains details of two datasets:
• PLICS Integrated Data Set: this includes data feeds from Emergency care (EC) attendances, Admitted patient care (APC) episodes, Outpatient (OP) appointments, Specialised ward care (SWC) bed days, Supplementary Information (SI), Mental Health Provider Spells (MHPS), Mental Health Care Contacts (MHCC), Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) appointments and Community Care Contacts (CSCC).
• PLICS Ambulance Data Set: this includes incidents going through 999 call centres or dispatch centres in England.
This is the second year that these datasets have been incorporated into a single integrated report, with previous releases focusing on individual settings.
The PLICS data collection is part of NHS England’s Costing Transformation Programme (CTP). The CTP aims to improve the quality of costing information in the NHS, and support providers to improve the efficiency of their services.
The PLICS data collected are matched to national activity datasets with the aim of improving the quality and utilisation of the PLICS data submitted.
Acute costing data is linked to activity present within the Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) data. Activity reported for EC, APC and OP feed types uses the linked HES data field when reporting breakdowns of values from PLICS. Reporting of all other PLICS feed types uses the submitted value from PLICS.
Linked data analysis for mental health, IAPT and CSCC services is not reported due to their lower linkage rates.
These statistics are classified as experimental and should be used with caution. Experimental statistics are new official statistics in the testing phase undergoing evaluation.
The data from the 2021-22 PLICS collection is used by NHS England in the National Cost Collection (NCC) publication. Information on how and why analysis in this report may differ from the NCC published analysis is included in the section Relationship to NHS England’s National Cost Collection outputs.
Highlights
Key Definitions
Acute
Acute data includes data for the following feed types:
- Emergency care (EC) - data relating to EC attendances in NHS hospitals, minor injury units and walk-in centres in England
- Admitted patient care (APC) – data relating to episodes for patients admitted to NHS hospitals in England and community inpatient episodes
- Outpatients (OP) – data relating to appointments in a hospital or clinic without an overnight stay, where a patient is treated as an outpatient or a day patient
- Specialised ward care (SWC) - data relating to adult, neonatal and paediatric critical care. To note, SWC activities are counted in days
Supplementary Information (SI)
- SI data relating to high-cost devices, high-cost drugs, unbundled outpatient diagnostic imaging and wheelchair equipment. To note, costs for SI are distributed across both Acute and Mental Health
Mental Health (MH)
MH data includes data for the following feed types:
- Mental Health Care Contacts (MHCC) – data relating to mental healthcare where a patient receives treatment without an overnight stay
- Provider Spells (MHPS) - data relating to a continuous period of time when a patient is admitted to a clinic or hospital for mental healthcare
Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT)
- IAPT data relates to appointments for assessment, treatment, and review
Community Services Care Contacts (CSCC)
- CSCC data relates to care activities undertaken by providers of community service care contacts
Ambulance
Ambulance data relates to calls made to the Ambulance Control Room that require one of the following:
- Hear and Treat – clinical advice is provided, or the patient is referred to an appropriate service. No ambulance trust vehicle or staff arrive at the scene
- See and Treat - an emergency response arrives at the scene, and the patient is treated and discharged at the scene
- See and Convey - an emergency response arrives at the scene, and one or more patients is conveyed by ambulance to a healthcare provider
- Other Scenario – including hoax calls, incomplete and cancelled calls
To note
As the content and scope of the data collection are still being developed comparisons are not made between different years of data. See comparability section for further details.
PLICS Dashboard
Integrated Patient Level Information and Costing 2021-22: Dashboard
This dashboard allows the user to explore the charts presented in this report, summarising the activity and cost submitted in the PLICS data collection, at a provider-level, region-level and ICB-level. The dashboard was built using the Integrated Patient Level Activity and Costing 2021-22: CSV data that accompanies this report and is available in the resources section below.
Key Facts
Acute - 169 providers reported a total cost of £60.4 billion, the majority of which relates to APC at £37.3 billion. The total cost covers around 20.4 million EC attendances, 17.1 million APC episodes, 81.6 million OP appointments and 2.4 million SWC days.
Supplementary Information (SI) - 138 providers reported a total cost of £3.4 billion.
Mental Health (MH) - 59 providers reported a total cost of £7.1 billion including: £4.1 billion relating to 16.4 million care contacts and £3.1 billion relating to hospital spells.
Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) - 47 providers reported a total cost of £596.8 million relating to 4.7 million appointments.
Community Services Care Contacts (CSCC) - 110 providers reported a total cost of £4.2 billion relating to 57.5 million care activities.
Ambulance - 11 providers reported a total cost of £2.9 billion relating to 12.2 million incidents.
Resources
Last edited: 9 November 2023 3:44 pm