Plain English Summary

The Five Year Forward View for Mental Health highlights the need to change the way Mental Health (MH) services are funded, developing new payment systems, which incentivise access to quality services that deliver good outcomes, both clinical and non-clinical (e.g. employment) (Mental Health Taskforce, 2016). 

This project extension aims to support NHS England in the development of a capitation payment system, within New Care Models (NCM), for two Specialised Mental Health Services: Child and Adolescent Mental Health (CAMHS) Tier 4 and Adult Secure Mental Health Services: Low and Medium Secure. 

Capitation is a block contract which value is determined by the number and needs of a defined population; in order to avoid the risks associated to block contracts it will be complemented by outcome benchmarking, to ensure the needs of the target population are being met. 

Our role is that of providing NHS England with the evidence to compare risks and benefits of different payment alternatives. 

We explored the possibility of using a national dataset, Mental Health Services Dataset (MHSDS), which records individual level data of people who are in contact with MH services, including Specialised Mental Health Services, as the main data source for the analyses. However we discovered data quality issues. This is relevant as it establishes the importance of improving data quality before MHSDS can be used for commissioning purposes in the context of Specialised Mental Health Services.

The evidence we provide is based on data provided by NHS England and NHS Improvement (NHS E&I). The data transfer has been delayed in recent months, we will continue with the analysis as soon as we receive new data from NHS E&I.

References

MENTAL HEALTH TASKFORCE 2016. The Five Year Forwards View for Mental Health.