Clinical coding to be scrutinised in national audit
The Audit Commission is to undertake a national programme of clinical coding audit in the NHS in England that will affect every PCT, trust and foundation trust. The results of this national audit – due to start in 2007 and covering 74,000 episodes of care – could be put into a league table of error […]
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No mistake
Misspelt electronic records can have serious effects. Daloni Carlisle looks at the results of a three-year initiative to test the data quality of GPs’ patient lists.
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Anti-fraud software extended to all NHS acute trusts
A pilot scheme that detected nearly £1m of duplicate and fraudulent payments by the public sector has been extended to include all NHS acute trusts. The Audit Commission’s creditor data matching exercise, in which NHS and local authority records are matched against each other and records from Companies House with the results fed back to trusts […]
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‘Upcoding’ a hazard as PbR pressure grows
Clinical coders are coming under pressure to ‘upcode’ to maximise income under Payment by Results, a conference heard last week. Sue Eve-Jones, director of the Professional Association of Clinical Coders, told a conference organised by the Health Service Journal in London: “I am being given direct evidence of the pressure on managers who are being […]
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St Mary’s goes live with JAC pharmacy management
St Mary’s NHS Trust has become the second trust in London to go live with a new pharmacy management system from JAC Computer Services Ltd, supplied by BT Capital Care Alliance. The new pharmacy system has been supplied to the trust as an additional service by BT CCA, the local service provider for the NHS […]
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Choose and Book ‘will be a year late’
The flagship Choose and Book electronic booking application will be at least a year late by the time it is rolled out across England NHS chief executive, Sir Nigel Crisp, said yesterday. Speaking to the House of Commons public accounts committee (PAC) he said that patients would still be offered a choice of four or […]
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Investment in clinical coding now critical
NHS trusts must urgently invest in the financial and performance management and supporting information systems, the Audit Commission says in its new report on the early lessons from Payment by Results (PbR). The report, ‘Early lessons from payment by results’, says it is vital that trusts have good quality information systems and data. "Good information systems […]
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Code red
Daloni Carlisle reports on how the often neglected discipline of clinical coding is becoming vital to the financial health of NHS trusts, and highlights the spread of ‘upcoding’.
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Trust with CEO linked to IT supplier rapped
The Audit Commission has criticised "lack of attention to good governance" in a hospital trust that procured IT services from a company directed by the chief executive’s husband. Although the report found no evidence that Christine Miles, chief executive of the Royal Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Trust, did anything wrong, it stressed that she should have distanced herself […]
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Warning to trusts on NPfIT costs
The Audit Commission and National Audit Office have warned that the National Programme for IT will be a new risk for NHS organisations to deal with in this financial year, calling the additional costs "considerable." The two bodies’ joint report, "Financial Management in the NHS" says that the money will have to come from […]
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