Dr. Tony O'Connell:

At the moment, outpatient activity is funded in a block way. There is an expectation that hospitals will do so many thousand outpatient visits every year. Therefore, they are funded for that. That funding does take into account the range of procedures, interviews and interactions which occur in an outpatient setting. In a sense, the block funding for outpatient activity has already taken into account the fact that some of those patients who attend an outpatients department would, for example, have been having some local anaesthetic and a small mole on the back of their hand taken off. The issue is the difference between the reimbursement for that in block funding form and the reimbursement for calling it a day case activity.