Background
Plymouth Primary Care Trust used the National Benchmarker to inform its negotiations with its key acute care provider. Now both trusts use it to monitor activity as part of their contract. John Harrison, deputy director of commissioning at the trust, says: 'Both parties to the contract have formally agreed to use the National Benchmarker tool to identify those areas where the trust becomes an outlier so that we can then investigate the reasons.'
Benefits
Harrison says: 'The National Benchmarker gives us a much stronger argument on some of the negotiated positions we hold. It alerts us to any areas that look out of step with national norms and provides back-up to any areas where we believe there are concerns.'
'I think that just letting trusts know that you are using it would potentially have an impact. In our context, jointly using the National Benchmarker with our acute care provider helps professionalise the relationship between the two trusts. It provides an independent and systematic approach.'
'I've got a much fuller, richer picture about what is going on. I'm not aware of anything else that can give such up to date analysis and the kind of ratio analysis that the National Benchmarker does.'
Examples
'It has been beneficial in preparing for our out-patient and in-patient PBR audits. Throughout both audits we referred back to the benchmarker evidence to ensure that the things that we were asking the local auditors to look at was of the highest priority to us as a commissioner.'
'An example of an indicator that I find particularly helpful is the multiple same-day attendance ratio for first visit patients. The way in which this is counted in a trust can have an impact on charging and it is an area worth keeping under review.'
Summary
'It's important to have as much evidence as possible when you go into contract negotiations. The National Benchmarker adds another string to my bow. I like the functionality. It has got some fairly intuitive ways of drilling down into the data.'