Background
It is important for practices to accurately record Residential Institute (RI) Codes for patients who reside in either a care home or residential home, in order to ensure an accurate Global Sum weighting is applied to such patients.
Many colleagues may have seen the results of a survey undertaken by the IGPM which found that nearly 70% of their members respondents identified discrepancies between their practice’s register of RI patients and those recognised in their quarterly global sum statement for weighting purposes an issue, they felt, connected to the methodology applied when extracting data from clinical systems when using the Residential Institute code.
Historically, there have been several variations of locally assigned RI codes to identify these cohorts. However, these were streamlined nationally several years ago. Whilst PCSE guidance advised that practices need not recode all the previously used RI codes, there was an expectation that the new codes would be applied to new registrations moving forwards.
The correct application of RI codes remains the responsibility of the practice and ensures practices are remunerated at a higher value level than the normal weighted capitation payment. Care home and residential home patients who have an assigned residential institute (RI) code attract a factor of 1.43 to the global sum payment, which is an uplift of 43% due to the increase in associated workload. This weighting is only one part of the Carr-Hill Formula.