Locally negotiated prices are frequently a source of dispute between providers and commissioners. We tendered for a project at a 2-site London Acute Trust to review their entire local price list.
The project involved:
- selecting a peer group of similar organisations to benchmark the Trust’s prices against
- analysing cost data from Reference Costs to determine a ‘reasonably efficient’ local price in line with tariff guidance
- tidying up areas that were more properly charged at national tariff and showing how data can be mapped to enable this in the future
- brokering compromise arrangements where the activities could not be benchmarked from Reference Costs
- ensuring any Local Price Variations (i.e. where national prices were to be overriden with different local prices) were documented and understood
The report was accepted in full by the Steering Group, consisting of commissioners, the Trust and the regulators.