Use of information for effective regulation

Accepted.
The Health and Social Care Act 2012, requires the Health and Social Care Information Centre to establish and operate a system for the collection or analysis of information in connection with the provision of health services and adult social care in England, if so directed by the Secretary of State or NHS England. The Informatics Services Commissioning Group, established in 2013, has been set up to enable the Health and Social Care Information Centre to become the focal point for data collected at the national level and that it increasingly becomes a checkpoint for those seeking new data collections.
The Health and Social Care Information Centre publishes more than 130 statistical publications annually via its website. It also publishes a range of national indicators and metrics many of which are available publicly through its indicator portal. This includes, for example, the Summary Hospital-level Mortality Indicator, indicators from the Quality Outcomes Framework and measures from the NHS Outcomes Framework.
In addition, a range of metrics are collected and published by other organisations across the health sector that relate directly to the quality of patient care. This includes data on infection control published by Public Health England and information on safety incidents that are published by NHS England. From November 2013, NHS England will increasingly make such information accessible through NHS Choices in order to bring together the most reliable and relevant data from national web services and act as a ‘front door’ to the best information on health and social care on the internet.
Published data can be readily accessed by regulators to assess the risk of non-compliance. Where needed, however, additional data can be made available to regulators, for example, through local arrangements such as direct memoranda of understanding with the appropriate data collector.
Published Official Statistics are subject to the UK Statistics Authority’s Code of Practice for Official Statistics34 (January 2009) which expects that statistical reports should be released as soon as they are ready to avoid unnecessary delays and that such publication should take into account the needs of data users and the public.
In the light of this, and other similar recommendations in the Review, we expect that the Health and Social Care Information Centre should explore options and make proposals for using standard reporting formats that can be made more available to all organisations, in line with the ‘do once and use many times’ principle, with a view to improving consistency of analysis across the system.

The Health and Social Care Information Centre was replaced by NHS Digital, which merged with NHS England.

There are currently multiple coordinated collections of data for different audiences. They inform the actions of regulators and include outcomes but also wider information. These include: • Model Hospital: benchmarked insights across the quality of care, productivity and organisational culture to identify opportunities for improvement.

• NHS Federated Data Platform: software to improve the sharing of data currently stored in separate systems.

• NHS England’s own approach to monitoring performance in trusts.

• CQC’s Insight tools: to monitor quality of care and indicate risks

• CQC Inspection reports

Through the Learn from patient safety events (LFPSE) service, health and social care staff can:

• Record information about things that could have or did affect the safety of patients, or things that have gone well, in order to support learning and safety improvement

• Access, review and update event records they have permission to edit, and undertake governance activities to support local patient safety response and improvement

• View and download data about what patient safety events have been recorded within their own organisation, or by organisations within their Integrated Care Board (ICB) or region to the new Learn From Patient Safety Events (LFPSE) service according to their level of access

The National Information Board ensures that the Health and Social Care Information Centre is the focal point for data collected at the national level and that it increasingly becomes a ‘gateway’ for those seeking new data collections. The Centre will continue to look for opportunities for standardising outputs in the context of the dissemination activities (for example to support the Care Quality Commission’s new inspection and intelligent monitoring activities), and it will work with its partners to explore how this approach might support their work.

In addition, a range of metrics are collected and published across the health sector that relate directly to the quality of patient care. This includes data on infection control (Public Health England), safety incidents (NHS England) and patients’ feedback reported on the NHS Choices website and, in future, through a national Health & Social Care Digital Service, which will be replacing NHS Choices. This new online service will bring together the most reliable and relevant data from national web services and act as a ‘front door’ to the best information on health and social care on the internet.

This recommendation was accepted by the Government.

In the January 2014 Hard Truths report, the Government referred to the Health and Social Care Act 2012 which required the Health and Social Care Information Centre to establish and operate a system for the collection of analysis of information in connection with the provision of health services and adult social care in Engand. The Health and Social Care Centre was established in April 2013 and the Government said it published more than 130 statistical publications annually via its website, as well as a range of national indicators and metrics, many of which were available publicly through its indicator portal.

In the February 2015 Culture Change report, the Government said that the National Information Board ensured that the Health and Social Care Information Centre was the focal point for data collected at the national level, and the Centre would continue to look for opportunities for standardising statistical outputs. The Government said that a Health & Social Care Digital Service would be replacing NHS Choices, which would bring together data from national web services.