Patient Level Information and Costing System (PLICS) Data Collections

NHS England's Costing Transformation Programme (CTP) was set up to implement PLICS across acute, mental health, ambulance and community providers.

The CTP involves:

• introducing and implementing new standards for patient-level costing
• developing and implementing one single national cost collection to replace current multiple collections
• establishing the minimum required standards for costing software and promoting its adoption
• driving and encouraging sector support to adopt Patient Level Costing methodology and technology

Learn more about PLICS on the NHS England website.

The following PLICS data collections have been carried out by NHS Digital:

• PLICS Acute (pilot – 2016)
• PLICS Acute (wider rollout – 2017)
• PLICS Acute (continued implementation – 2018)
• PLICS Acute (continued implementation – 2019)
• PLICS Acute (continued implementation – 2020)
• PLICS Mental Health (pilot – 2017)
• PLICS Mental Health (continued implementation - 2018)
• PLICS Ambulance (pilot – 2018)
• PLICS Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) (pilot - 2018)
• PLICS Ambulance, PLICS Mental Health, PLICS Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) for FY19/20 data (January 2021)
• PLICS Integrated (2021, 2022)
• PLICS Ambulance (2021, 2022)
• PLICS Early Implementer collection for Community Health Services and for Acute Services for trusts not mandated for PLICS for financial year 2020/21 (December 2021 to January 2022)

Data collected 

This collection covers financial year 2022/23 data for which Patient Level Costing data is being collected for acute, mental health, IAPT and community health services from all designated providers.  

The data collected contains unit costs for inpatient admissions, emergency care, outpatient attendances, mental health provider spells and care contacts, IAPT appointments and community services care contacts for NHS providers in England.

This applies to designated providers as published in Annex A Section 2 of the Requirements Specification for Patient Level Information and Costing Systems (PLICS) Mandatory Collections continued implementation. 

The data collected will be used to:

• inform new methods of pricing NHS services
• inform new approaches and other changes to the design of the currencies used to price NHS services
• contribute to NHS England's strategic objective of a single national cost collection 
• inform the relationship between provider characteristics and cost
• help trusts to maximise use of their resources and improve efficiencies, as required by the provider licence
• identify the relationship between patient characteristics and cost
• support an approach to benchmarking for regulatory purposes
• allow NHS England to report the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the cost base in the English NHS

The data is collected annually.

The dataset for collection in 2023 is contained within the Requirements Specification for Patient Level Information and Costing Systems (PLICS) Mandatory Collections continued implementation Annex A Section 1 which is relevant to the associated Mandatory Request.

For details of the dataset specification for submission to NHS England, please see the Integrated extract specification on the NHS England website.

The format data should be submitted in

The PLICS submissions are preferred in XML but .csv format is also acceptable.  

The format and structure of the XML files are detailed in the NHS England, Integrated Schema.  

When the data collection takes place

Who is required to submit data

Further details can be found in the relevant Data Provision Notice.

Data collected

This collection covers financial year 2022/23 for which Patient Level Costing data is being collected for ambulance services from designated ambulance providers. 

This contains activity and financial data for all incidents going through 999 call centres or dispatch centres within England.  

This applies to designated providers as published in Annex A Section 4 of the Requirements Specification for Patient Level Information and Costing Systems (PLICS) Mandatory Collections continued implementation.

The data is used to:

• inform new methods of pricing NHS services
• inform new approaches and other changes to the design of the currencies used to price NHS services
• contribute to NHS England's strategic objective of a single national cost collection
• inform the relationship between provider characteristics and cost
• help trusts to maximise use of their resources and improve efficiencies, as required by the provider licence
• identify the relationship between patient characteristics and cost
• identify the relationship between incident characteristics and cost
• support an approach to benchmarking for regulatory purposes
• allow NHS England to report the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the cost base in the English NHS

The dataset for collection in 2023 for financial year 2022/23 data is contained within the Requirements Specification for Patient Level Information and Costing Systems (PLICS) Mandatory Collections continued implementation Annex A Section 3 which is relevant to the associated Mandatory Request.

For details of the dataset specification for submission to NHS England, please see the Ambulance Extract Specification.

The format data should be submitted in

The PLICS submissions are preferred in XML but .csv format is also acceptable.

The format and structure of the XML files are detailed on the NHS England Ambulance schema.

When the data collections take place

Who is required to submit data

Further details can be found in the Data Provision Notice.

Further submission information for trusts

How providers can submit PLICS data

PLICS files are to be submitted via Secure Electronic File Transfer (SEFT) to NHS England.

Further information on Secure Electronic File Transfer.

You should ensure well in advance of submission that you are set up as a SEFT user to allow you to submit your PLICS files to NHS England. Before submitting your files, you should undertake a SEFT connectivity test to ensure you will be able to submit data without any issues.

Providers should ensure that data is submitted via SEFT well in advance of the submission window closing (see dates/times above) to allow time for all data transfers to complete and confirmation emails to be received with the status of file validation.

To take a connectivity test, email [email protected].

What happens if the files do not pass validation first time?

If a submitted file does not pass the validation checks first time at NHS England, then you can correct the issue(s) and submit the file again (subject to the submission window still being open).

For multiple submission attempts, NHS England will only use the last good file when processing data from your trust (the latest file submitted which passed validation).

Please note that this means this will overwrite any previously submitted data for that given file for the relevant PLICS collection.

What notifications you will receive

You can expect to receive email notifications after submitting PLICS data to NHS England.

We will send an automated validation email, outlining the passed/failed validation status per file submitted, to provide timely feedback to data submitters.

In addition to the above, providers will also receive a daily status email for each collection to which data has been submitted, which will summarise the current submission status for your trust. This summary email is only issued the following day after a submission attempt (if you have submitted one or more PLICS files in the last 24 hours to NHS England).

Technical problems submitting data to NHS England

Please raise a service call with the NHS England National Service Desk at [email protected].

The National Service Desk will respond directly to your query or triage it to an appropriate team to respond. Please ensure you reference PLICS when raising your query to ensure there is minimal delay. 

How NHS Digital file checks relate to the NHS England Data Validation Tool checks

If your files pass the mandatory validations in the NHS England and NHS Improvement Data Validation Engine, then they should also pass the file validation stage at NHS England.

Any queries on the NHS England Data Validation Engine should be directed to [email protected]. 

PLICS transparency information 

You can find further transparency information for PLICS on the GDPR information and the Transparency notice. 

We are working across NHS England to consolidate our webpages therefore you may see changes from time to time. We will ensure to keep you updated once the new PLICS webpages are ready.

Thank you for your patience during this time.