This analysis uses the Patient Level Information and Costing System (PLICS) data for 2020-21 collected between 6 September and 26 November 2021 by NHS Digital. This data was collected in compliance with a Mandatory Request from NHS England and NHS Improvement, and in accordance with the Information Standard.
The mandatory request lists the NHS providers identified by NHS England and NHS Improvement as required to submit PLICS data for 2020-21. To note, the PLICS submission for University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust (RWE) has been excluded from this year’s collection due to their audited accounts not being signed off.
The PLICS collection for 2020-21 included:
Acute services:
- Emergency care (EC) attendances
- Admitted patient care (APC)
- Outpatients (OP) attendances and procedures
- Specialised ward care (SWC) - Adult, Paediatric and Neonatal critical care
- Supplementary Information (SI) - high cost drugs, blood products and devices, and unbundled outpatient diagnostic imaging. To note, some SI services are included within MH
MH services
- Complete and incomplete hospital provider spells
- Care contacts for non-admitted patients
IAPT services
- Each provider generated a PLICS IAPT data extract using the costing data held on their local PLICS system
Ambulance services
- All incidents going through 999 call centres or dispatch centres
- Each provider generated a PLICS Ambulance data extract using the costing data held on their local PLICS system
- For each incident, the data submitted included an activity record and costs relating to that activity, split by a specified list of collection activities (such as dispatch and control or patient handover) and collection resources (such as drugs and consumables or fleet resources)
Full details of the services in and out of scope are available in the National Cost Collection guidance published by NHS England and NHS Improvement.
For each activity (such as an episode, care contact or appointment), the data submitted included an activity record (with identifiers to permit linkage to other data sets) and costs relating to that activity, split by a specified list of collection activities (such as ward care, outpatient care, pharmacy or group session) and collection resources (such as doctors or nurses).
For hospital provider spells, APC episodes and adult paediatric and neonatal critical care periods that spanned the start or end of the period (started in a prior financial year, or had not ended by 31 March 2021), costs relating to the bed days that fell within the financial year were included.
For MH, learning disabilities services were included. Children and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS), drug and alcohol services, mental health specialist teams, secure mental health services and specialist mental health services were not included.
Providers used a tool published by NHS England and NHS Improvement to convert their data extract into files in the required format for submission, before uploading their PLICS submissions to a secure NHS Digital portal. Resubmissions could be made, and the most recent submission for each provider was retained.