CHARGING FOR EXTRA-CONTRACTUAL REFERRALS

1. The key elements for charging for ECRs are:-

• each provider unit should draw up, in advance of the financial year, a tariff setting out prices to apply to ECRs;
• the tariff should be calculated in accordance with the current costing and pricing guidance as issued by the SHS Management Executive in Scotland; and
• the tariff should apply to the whole year and should only be revised or amended where:
  • cost increases are to be met by increased allocations to purchasers;
  • certain services have not been covered by any category of charge and it was not reasonable for the provider to include this service in the original tariff; (this situation should be exceptional and in general the SHS Management Executive should be approached before new services are introduced and notified in-year). In such a case, it is important that the new prices exclude overheads, and other costs, already recovered through contracts and existing ECR tariffs;
  • a provider finds during the course of the year that it has the capacity to accept more referrals than it had anticipated when setting its prices. In such circumstances, prices can be revised downwards to marginal cost in accordance with the costing and pricing guidance;
  • Existing tariffs are clearly deficient, for example, where there has been an obvious arithmetical or printing error;
  • a tariff is ambiguous, for example, where a price per day is quoted but no indication is given as to whether such charges apply from day 1 or day 29.

2. The Guidance also states that no amendments to tariffs should be made until authorised and published by the Management Executive. Revised tariffs should be set to come into effect on the first day of a month, which should not precede the date of publication by the Management Executive. Providers may, however, implement price reductions immediately.

Other Information

3. Please note that the attached ECR tariffs for 1997-98 may contain revisions to tariffs previously supplied direct from providers and therefore supersede all other previous issues of ECR tariffs.

4. Please ensure that all future proposed revisions to tariffs are submitted to the Management Executive together with sufficient justification to support the revision.

FILE/DIRECTORY

ECR TARIFFS - 1997-98

INSTRUCTIONS FOR SETUP

1. Insert disk 1.
2. From the DOS prompt (c:\) type a:\INSTALL.
   The installation is a batch file. It creates a directory C:\ECRT9798 and copies a compressed file from the floppy disk. This file is then run and files are uncompressed into the new directory. After it does all this, it deletes the compressed file.
3. When the message INSTALLATION - DISK 1 - COMPLETE is seen, remove disk and insert disk 2.
4. Type A:\INSTALL.
   This does exactly the same as disk 1 - it is set up to create the directory C:\ECRT9798, which, if you have loaded disk 1, already exists. A number of other subdirectories are also created and compressed files copied to the correct location.
5. When the message INSTALLATION - DISK 2 - COMPLETE is seen, full installation is complete.
6. To access a directory/file for Trust/DMU, go into "Microsoft EXCEL" and open the ECRT9798 directory.

1. Installation of the programme requires 6MB of space on your hard disk.
2. If you attempt to reinstall over a previous attempt it will tell you the files exist already and ask if you want to overwrite them. The best idea is to say yes, or alternatively to delete the ECRT9798 directory completely before trying the installation again.
3. All disks are write protected and have been virus checked using Dr Solomons (version 7.71).