PSCAL SLA Monitoring (SLAM) for commissioners

The Leading Service Level Agreement Manager (SLAM) in the NHS
The PSCAL Service Level Agreement Manager (SLAM) is an activity and income contract setting and monitoring tool, which complies completely with NHS Payment by Results (PbR) methodology. However, SLAM goes much further than this in allowing the PCT to plan and monitor its local agreements for non-PbR activity and arrangements.

SLAM will take a Specialty and Point of Delivery (POD) activity plan then, using a specified out-turn dataset, devolve a Specialty/POD/HRG plan and, using a combination of national tariff for PbR activity and local trust specific tariffs for non-PbR activity, will calculate a planned income for each Trust. Actual activity is imported from the ‘NHS FCE to spell converter output’. During the import the specialist topups, excess bed-days, non-elective non-emergency activity and POD categories are calculated and assigned to each Trust. Being able to import this data without the need to manipulate it before importing into SLAM saves time and eradicates errors. Actual activity can be imported with patient details, GP, GP practice and consultant information. In addition to which there are five user defined fields.

For the Trust SLA contracts, actual versus plan in activity and price to the lowest level (HRG) can easily be accessed.

Results can be viewed either in:

• The data browser screens, where data is easily exported to Excel
• Standard reports
• User defined reports

SLAM offers many features to accommodate local arrangements such as:

• Marginal tariffs
• Tolerances
• Phasing profiles
• Trend prediction

For PCTs fortunate enough to have Trusts that use SLAM, they will benefit from being able to receive the agreed contract drilling down to patient level on a monthly basis, by means of a simple extract from the Trusts model in SLAM that is easily rebuilt in the PCTs version of SLAM.

For a healthcare commissioner SLAM will:

• Produce activity and income variance reports on a monthly or cumulative basis for the total SLA contract not just the PbR items
• Facilitate non activity items such as values for screening, high cost drugs etc
• Take the drudge out of data manipulation and maintenance of complicated linked spreadsheets
• Give confidence in the data being presented to the PCT’s board
• Allow easy transfer of data between Trust and PCT via the extremely easy to use PCT model export facility
  

Key Features:

• Multi-model facility allows easy comparison of Trust activity to SUS data
• Extremely easy import and data validation with user friendly and intuitive menus
• Imports from Access, Excel and CSV formats
• Interfaces with FCE to Spell converter output
• Carries all published national tariffs & MFFs
• Trust specific tariffs
• Marginal tariffs for non PbR activity
• Complies fully with PbR methodology
• Accommodates all the latest guidance to encompass contracts with thresholds
• Uses detailed out-turn of previous year to determine case-mix for plan at Trust/ Specialty/POD level
• Cumulative to date or month-on-month analysis
• Produces agreed SLA statement by Trust analysed by Specialty, POD and (PbR) HRGs
• Differential monthly phasing of planned activity by Trust – whole or fractional Spells
• Facilitates monthly activity download for comparison of actual vs plan
• Actual activity can drill down to GP, GP practice code, patient ID and consultant code plus five additional
• Marginal tariffs, tolerances, floors and ceilings
• Custom POD input to facilitate non Spell activity
• Ad hoc entries allow cash values to be phased across the year
• Trend predictor for actual activity
• Straight line or phased
• Four cluster levels to group Commissioners/Providers for reporting purposes
• Specialty grouping to highlight over/under performance at directorate level
• POD grouping
• Schedules to group types of contract for reporting
• Flexible reporting capability – new report writer

To find out more call 0845 054 0066 or email enquires@pscal.com