The Core NDA collects information for a 15-month audit period, for example 1 January to 31 March the following year.
Primary care data collection
The data is extracted quarterly from general practices via the General Practice Extraction Service (GPES).
All eligible practices will receive an invite via the Calculating Quality Reporting Service (CQRS) to participate in the audit.
Once the invite has been accepted the practice will automatically be included in all extracts for that audit period. Practices will need to opt-in again at the start of each audit period. Exactly how this opt-in model will work depends on the clinical system used.
Find more information about how NHS Digital collects information from primary care practices.
Indicative timings for extraction are:
- August: collection of data from January to June
- November: collection of data from January to September
- February: collection of data from January to December
- May: collection of full audit year data
Actual dates of data extraction are subject to change without notice.
The NHS England NDA, Primary Care support, and GPES teams have worked together to define the specifications and timescales for the quarterly collections which will take place automatically.
A full list of data items, including the SNOMED codes used for the extraction, are available in the Core NDA Business Rules document (archive content).
Secondary care and specialist services data collection
Secondary care and specialist services have access to the Clinical Audit Platform which enables continuous data collection throughout the audit year.
Data submitters can add updated clinical information as and when an individual patient has a new observation (such as blood pressure check or HbA1c reading), and there is also the option to complete a bulk upload of information at a suitable time (rather than waiting for a finite submission window). Data submitters will also be able to review their submitted data throughout the year.
There is a final cut-off date each year when the data will be extracted from all providers to build the reports from, but the providers will be able to continue to enter data at any time.