Recommendation 13

The pandemic has again highlighted the role of high-quality data in enabling effective service delivery, monitoring and improvement. For example, due to missing or inaccurate telephone numbers within NHS patient records, the shielding programme was unable to follow-up letters to 375,000 vulnerable people with phone calls. Local authorities, which were passed the details of individuals who could not be reached, struggled with inaccurate contact information. Difficulties sharing data also hindered local authorities’ ability to understand and manage outbreaks.29 We received written evidence from the British Medical Association, which told us that GPs and public health officials had been unable to receive timely, detailed information on tests conducted in privately-run sites despite government’s commitment to link data from privately run centres with patient medical records. It noted that this missing information limits the usefulness of the test results in understanding and managing outbreaks within a community, putting public health at severe risk.30