One of the NHS England and NHS Improvement reporting requirements is to provide information back to Acute Trusts in the form of a Trust Specific Summary Report which provides a breakdown of activity and costs based on Acute PLICS data submitted for each Trust. 

This document provides details of the report produced by NHS Digital for Trusts and how Trusts access that report via SEFT, after submitting PLICS data to NHS Digital.

This guidance document is a supplementary guidance document published by NHS Digital which complements  the NHS England and NHS Improvement Approved Costing Guidance documentation.

The main audience for this guidance document is the submitters of Acute PLICS Financial Year 2019/2020 data. 

Report details

Trusts will only see their own data in the report which is compiled based on PLICS Acute data submitted to NHS Digital.

The file format of the report is Comma Separated Values (CSV) file format.

The filename of the report is defined as: PLICS_Acute_Summary_Report_XXX_YYYYMMDDTHHMMSS

• the ‘XXX’ denotes the Trust Code submitting the data
• the date / time stamp is included to indicate when the report was generated

Reporting criteria

The report will contain the latest data submitted by each Trust on the basis that this will include data which has passed validation at NHS Digital and has been loaded to NHS Digital systems for processing.

Reporting frequency

The report will be generated on a daily basis during the PLICS Acute submission window for any Trust which has submitted or resubmitted PLICS Acute data.

The report will normally be accessible the next working day after PLICS data has been submitted to NHS Digital (following the process of loading data to NHS Digital systems has completed).

Any data submitted to NHS Digital after 6pm on the previous working day will not be included in the report.

The reports are date / time stamped to indicate when these were generated.

• PLICS data submitted and loaded up to the date / time recorded in the filename will be included in the report
• any data submitted or loaded after the date / time specified in the filename will be made available in subsequent reports

Where Trusts have resubmitted their data to NHS Digital, a further report will be produced and Trusts should ensure they select the latest report (by carefully selecting the latest date / time stamp from the filename) to get the most up to date view of the data submitted and loaded.

The Secure Electronic File Transfer (SEFT) system’s function is to transfer files securely into and out of NHS Digital. This is the same system used to submit your PLICS data.

For further details please see the quick help guide for SEFT users.

Logging on to SEFT

NHS Digital will have issued you a username and password to submit your PLICS data. Please use the same credentials provided to access your PLICS Trust Summary Report.

• Log on to SEFT: https://www.seftprod.hscic.gov.uk
• Enter your username and password
• Click on sign on

SEFT dashboard

The SEFT dashboard homepage is where you will see the transfers (downloads) available to you to access

1. Select PLICS-Trust-Summary-Report under the transfer name
2. Click on the above transfer name, this will take you to the folder for your organisation

3.    Click on the file 
4.    An arrow icon will appear at the bottom of the screen 
5.    Click on the arrow icon to open the file

You can log in to download the report suing a 3rd Party Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) tool rather than the SEFT online Portal.

To log in via a 3rd party tool, in this example WinSCP which is accessible from:

https://winscp.net/eng/index.php if not already downloaded to your own computer.

Windows Secure Copy (WinSCP) is an open source free SFTP client for Windows.

Its main function is file transfer between a local and a remote computer.

Please note that if you choose to use a 3rd party tool you will need to generate a Secure Shell (SSH) key pair.

Guidance for this can be obtained by emailing seft.team@nhs.net