Mental Health Patient Level Activity and Costing 2019-20

This analysis uses the Patient Level Information and Costing System (PLICS) Mental Health data for 2019-20 collected in January 2021 by NHS Digital. This data was collected in compliance with a mandatory request from NHS England and NHS Improvement.

The mandatory request lists the NHS providers identified by NHS England and NHS Improvement as required to submit PLICS Mental Health data for 2019-20.

Following data quality checks, data from a small number of providers were excluded from the statistics presented in this report.

Non-NHS providers and NHS providers in other sectors that provide mental health services were not within the scope of this collection.

The PLICS Mental Health collection for 2019-20 included

• complete and incomplete hospital provider spells
• care contacts for non-admitted patients.

Mental health 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.

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 hospital provider spells that spanned the start or end of the period (started in a prior financial year, or had not ended by 31 March 2020), costs relating to the days that fell within the financial year were included.

Each provider generated a PLICS Mental Health data extract using the costing data held on their local PLICS system, in accordance with the Information Standard.

For each care contact or hospital provider spell, 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 outpatient care or group session) and collection resources (such as doctors or nurses).

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 Mental Health submissions to a secure NHS Digital portal. Resubmissions could be made, and the most recent submission for each provider was retained.

The NHS England and NHS Improvement conversion tool required all data items to be in the correct format and all mandatory fields to be populated to generate the files for submission. The tool also generated warnings for potentially incorrect data such as negative cost activity for providers to review and improve data quality.

NHS England and NHS Improvement reviewed summary data from the PLICS Mental Health collection during the collection window.

Submitting providers also received a summary report soon after making their submission.

Where data quality concerns were identified, NHS England and NHS Improvement asked the relevant providers to resubmit. Providers could also request permission to resubmit.

For providers that submitted close to the deadline, there will have been less opportunity to review data quality and arrange resubmission.

The latest submission from each provider was retained.

The data from the set of latest submissions has been linked to Mental Health Services Data Set (MHSDS) data for 2019-20 (the ‘Linkage to Mental Health Services Data Set’ section provides further details).

Following data quality checks by NHS England and NHS Improvement, data submissions from a small number of providers have been excluded from the data used in this report.

The PLICS Mental Health data for 2019-20 was pseudonymised and released to NHS England and NHS Improvement. This data will be used in the National Cost Collection outputs, the PLICS Portal for submitting NHS providers, and other tools and analysis.