The Aggregate Contract Monitoring (ACM) information standard is one of a set of standards being introduced by NHS England to enable national consistency of the flow of cost and activity information from providers to commissioners.

The others are:

• DCB3003 Patient Level Contract Monitoring
• DCB3002 Devices Patient Level Contract Monitoring
• DCB2212 Drugs Patient Level Contract Monitoring.

Having national standards to support contract monitoring will:

• reduce burden
• allow simpler and more consistent reporting
• allow easier reconciliation and validation of invoices
• provide support for service change planning and hospital capacity analysis
• improve forecasting
• allow greater monitoring of equity of access to services.

This specific ACM standard will enable the interchange, in a uniform format, of monthly aggregate contract monitoring data between commissioners and providers of healthcare.

Data is required to be submitted to NHS Digital on a monthly basis.

About this change

The changes introduced in this release are designed to:

• remove the number of very general purpose (VGP) data elements, to improve information governance and data quality
• improve consistency across the other contract monitoring data sets
• include recent changes made to the NHS Data Model and Dictionary

In addition, this information standard is now made mandatory for:

• NHS or Independent Sector providers commissioned to provide acute services under the full-length version of the NHS Standard Contract

The standard remains voluntary for other providers; full details are in the Change Specification.

The standard only relates to diagnostic imaging tests recorded in Radiology Information Systems (RIS) and not separate systems such as for breast screening and mobile cardiac ultrasound activity.