Regulators consult on hospital funding system

13 May 13
Views are being sought on how the funding system for hospitals can be reformed and made more responsive to patients' needs.

By Vivienne Russell | 13 May 2013

Views are being sought on how the funding system for hospitals can be reformed and made more responsive to patients' needs.

Health sector regulator Monitor and the national commissioning body NHS England today issued a discussion paper on improving the way services are paid for. The current payment-by-results scheme has been in operation for almost a decade but has been criticised for being insufficiently patient-focused and for hindering the move to more integrated care.

The paper includes some early thinking on what a new NHS payments system might look like and what its objectives might be.

Adrian Masters, managing director of sector development at Monitor, said: ‘We believe the way NHS services are paid for can help deliver the best possible care for patients, for example, by encouraging more integrated care, as well as helping the NHS deliver better value for the taxpayer.

‘This is an opportunity for us to make a real difference to NHS services as we want to work with the sector to achieve this.’

Paul Baumann, chief financial officer at NHS England, added that there was now an opportunity to design a payment system that did more for patients.

‘Changes to this system will not happen overnight, and it is important we get this right,’ he said.

‘As part of this engagement we are gathering evidence to support short- and longer-term improvements to the payments system.’

The discussion paper asks for views on: the objectives for the new payments; the proposed way of categorising patient need and patterns of supply; a suggested spectrum of interventions to regulate payments; the feasibility of implementing some immediate changes and experimenting with others in the 2014/15 financial year.

The deadline for responses is July 19.

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