Tuesday, July 24, 2012

NHS block contracts for mental health continue for forseeable future

As I predicted (see previous post), payment by results will not be introduced into mental health services next April 2013. The department of health has confirmed to the Health Service Journal that next year was only ever seen as the earliest possible date and the roll-out will be delayed beyond 2014. HSJ blames the lack of reliability of clustering data, but the system also depends on pricing packages of care, and I haven't seen any attempts to do this - unless it's happening with AQP pilots for IAPT (again, see another previous post). It's up to Monitor and the NHS Commissioning Board to determine the future of mental health contracts.