Mental Health Patient Level Activity and Costing 2019-20

NHS England and NHS Improvement’s Costing Transformation Programme includes a phased replacement of annual aggregate costing data submissions with Patient Level Information and Costing System (PLICS) record level collections.

During the transition to patient level collections, some data continues to be collected by NHS England and NHS Improvement at aggregate level including data on mental health care in other NHS sectors not yet mandated to submit to the PLICS Mental Health collection, and some elements of mental health care that are not yet part of the PLICS Mental Health collection.

Historically the aggregate data collection was known as Reference Costs. From 2018-19, the patient level and aggregate collections are together referred to as the National Cost Collection (NCC).

The NCC is currently the official source of costing data for NHS activity in England, and analysis from the collection is published by NHS England and NHS Improvement.

The NCC publication will include mental health costing data from the PLICS Mental Health collection and aggregate data from other mental health services and mental health services in other sectors. The PLICS data and aggregate data will be presented separately, as differences in the data items collected mean that the record level and aggregate data cannot be brought together into single tables.

The interactive PLICS Portal made available to providers by NHS England and NHS Improvement includes PLICS data only.