Request

The NHSBSA makes payments for Covid-19 vaccinations to Primary Care Network (PCN) providers in England. May I request the following data for October 2022, in excel format: Column 1 Year/month Column 2 ODS Code for PCN Column 3 ICS Code for the PCN Column 4 ICS Name for the PCN Column 5 Number of vaccines administered by the PCN Column 6 Total Payment made for administration of these Covid-19 vaccinations Column 7 Total of ALL other miscellaneous payments relating to Covid-19 vaccinations made to PCN.

Response

Columns 3 and 4

We do not hold ICS codes or names for Primary Care Networks (PCNs).

Column 7

We do not hold information on miscellaneous payments. We do hold information on adjustments which could be either a payment or a deduction, following post-payment verification.

Remaining Information

A copy of the information is attached.

We do not hold PCN data that we can confidently join to the Lead PCN Practice ODS Code and so have chosen to report at Lead PCN Practice level.

The NHSBSA calculates payments for COVID-19 vaccinations to pharmacies and Primary Care Networks (PCNs) in England.

Covid vaccination data is keyed in via Point of Care (POC) Systems and they transferred to the NHSBSA Manage Your Service (MYS) application.

Each month, vaccine providers submit claims to request payment based on the data that has been transferred into MYS. To be paid in a timely fashion such claims must be submitted during a specified declaration submission period. Should claims be submitted outside the time windows, payments will be made later. This means that in some cases there is a difference between the number of vaccines that have been 'claimed' and the number that have been 'paid'.

Both the number of 'claimed' and 'paid' vaccinations have been reported in this request.

When considering the nature of the vaccine data there are several ways it can be reported over time:

Administration Month

This is the month in which the vaccine was administered to the patient.

Payment Month

This is the month in which the payment was made dispenser of the vaccine. Note that all payments for Pharmacies are paid one month later than those for PCN providers. Keying Month

This is the month in which the vaccine record first appeared on the MYS system.

Submission/Claim Month

This is the month in which the claim for payment for a vaccination occurred.

For example, suppose that a PCN patient is given a covid vaccination dose 1 in January (Administration Month) and then the paper record of this is misplaced for a while. The record is found and keyed into a POC system during February (Keying Month). The Provider is allowed to claim for keying during February in the first 5 days of March, but they're a little late and authorise the claim on the 7th of March (Submission Month) As the claim is outside the submission window it is not paid in March, it will instead be paid during April (Payment Month).

Another example could be a Pharmacy patient given a covid vaccination dose 1 in January (Administration Month), keyed in January (Keying Month), then submitted in February (Submission Month) and then payments are calculated in February, however as this is for a pharmacy the payments are held back and not paid until March (Payment Month).

For the purposes of this request, we have chosen to report by Administration Month.

We do not hold PCN data that we can confidently join to the Lead PCN Practice ODS Code and so data is at Lead PCN Practice level.

Data included in this request is limited to vaccinations carried out by PCNs only.

Data included in this request is also limited to vaccinations administered in October 2022.

The latest data used is a snapshot of the MYS system data that was taken on 7th November 2022. This is the snapshot of data taken after the August submission period that was used to calculate payments. Pharmacy name and address are as held at this date.

This payment data does not include any adjustments made by NHSBSA Provider Assurance as part of post payment verification exercise. These adjustments are made at account level and may relate to several months of activity.

Payment data includes payments made and those scheduled for payment in the future.

Payments comprise an Item of Service fee and potentially a Supplementary fee. Payments do not relate to the value of the drugs dispensed.

The total used for the payment calculation may not match the totals shown in 'live' POC systems or MYS that continue to receive updates after the snapshot used to calculate payments was taken.

Vaccination records are limited to those which have been associated with a declaration submission. This may include late submission declarations received after the deadline for declarations such records are not processed until the next month.

Please note that some vaccinations attract a supplementary fee, so it is not possible to determine the number of vaccinations by dividing the total paid by the basic Item of Service (IoS) fee.

It is possible for new records from old administration months to be entered in the future, thus the totals here for each administration month could change when more data is processed.

Please note that this request and our response is published on our Freedom of Information disclosure log at:

https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/foi-28879