Measuring the Activity of Mental Health Services in England: Variation in Categorising Activity for Payment Purposes

Rowena Jacobs, Martin Chalkley, Jan R. Böhnke, Michael Clark, Valerie Moran, M. J. Aragón*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleResearchpeer-review

7 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

In the context of international interest in reforming mental health payment systems, national policy in England has sought to move towards an episodic funding approach. Patients are categorised into care clusters, and providers will be paid for episodes of care for patients within each cluster. For the payment system to work, clusters need to be appropriately homogenous in terms of financial resource use. We examine variation in costs and activity within clusters and across health care providers. We find that the large variation between providers with respect to costs within clusters mean that a cluster-based episodic payment system would have substantially different financial impacts across providers.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)847-857
Number of pages11
JournalAdministration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research
Volume46
Issue number6
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Nov 2019

Keywords

  • Costs
  • Episodic payment
  • Mental health funding
  • Provider payment
  • Variation

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