Physical health checks for people with severe mental Illness

The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, on behalf of the Department of Health and Social Care, has directed NHS England to collect and analyse data in connection with Physical Health Checks for people with Severe Mental Illness. The PHSMI data extraction is needed because the data will:

• help monitor health outcomes to understand whether delivery of physical health checks and follow-up interventions lead to improvements in physical health indicators in people with SMI over time, including whether any given patient retains improvements in subsequent annual health check cycles
• inform whether current policy and practice exacerbate or reduce health inequalities, including an insight into which patient cohorts are accessing health checks and interventions, and whether these have the same impact in different cohorts
• review whether different risk factors (for example SMI diagnosis, demographics, socioeconomic status, or frequency of contacts with primary and secondary care) can be utilised to inform risk stratification of physical health checks and determine the style or frequency of checks appropriate for various patient cohorts
• assess and address local inequalities in access to and uptake of physical health checks and interventions, informing a targeted approach to improve service provision on national and local levels
• help understand the impact of health checks on healthcare utilisation and the subsequent cost effectiveness of delivery

This Notice is served on:

• all general practices in England

The first extract took place in January 2021. NHS England received an initial full-year extract of data covering the 2019-2020 financial year. The data has been extracted on a quarterly basis following that initial full-year extract. However, for the financial year 2023-2024, the data is being extracted on a biannual basis. This is due to the retirement of the SDCS collection.

The GP live collections timetable provides further details of when this data collection will take place. Please note that this timetable is a live document and is frequently edited to reflect changes to the GPES collection schedule; users are advised to check this regularly for updates.

5 October 2023

Version 2.0 of this Notice issued to reflect the change in the collection frequency, the upcoming retirement of the SDCS collection in March 2024, the updated burden methodology for GPES extracts and the legal and organisational changes which came into effect on 1 July 2022 and 1 February 2023.