Withdrawn standards and collections

The Pathology Test and Results Standard (DAPB4017), which was intended to form the basis of sharing pathology test requests and results for all of England, was published in August 2021. It became apparent that various aspects of the standard make implementation extremely challenging.

Following internal review, the Pathology Standards and Implementation team requested that it be formally retired as an information standard. This was approved at the October 2023 meeting of the Data Alliance Partnership Board (DAPB). A supporting Information Standards Notice confirming the retirement with immediate effect has been issued. 

Retirement of this standard is being done in tandem with deprecating the legacy ISB 1557 EDIFACT Pathology Messaging Standard (Amd 39/2003 EDIFACT v1.003) and development of a new FHIR/SNOMED-based information standard to support the new Pathology Messaging – FHIR API, scheduled for publication in March 2024, post successful implementation of a first of type data flow pilot.

Electronic Data Interchange For Administration, Commerce and Transport (EDIFACT) is an international EDI standard for the exchange of messages that was adopted by organisations wishing to trade globally. The EDIFACT Pathology Messaging Standard defines the content, structure and management of electronic pathology reports between laboratories and General Practice.

EDIFACT is fundamentally limited because it is:
- unable to carry SNOMED CT encoded test result concepts – it can only support Read v2 Pathology Bounded Code List (PBCL) codes. Read v2 was retired in April 2016 and it is no longer possible to create new national Read codes.
- unable to support complex report structures containing fully atomic, coded results – data elements are mainly represented as text.
- the continued use of Pathology Messaging Implementation Project (PMIP) EDIFACT is a significant barrier to new market entrants who struggle to implement a messaging technology that is over 30 years old, and not aligned with modern standards such as FHIR.

A Deprecation Notice has been issued. Formal retirement of EDIFACT will take place on 31 March 2024 with a target retirement date of 31 March 2025.

This standard will be replaced by a new FHIR/SNOMED-based information standard to support the new Pathology Messaging – FHIR API, scheduled for publication in March 2024, post successful implementation of a first of type data flow pilot.

Patient-Level Information and Costing Systems Integrated Data set

Patient-Level Information and Costing Systems Ambulance Data Set

There is an existing automated data collection in place to capture COVID-19 and flu vaccinations delivered to all cohorts, including frontline healthcare workers (HCWs)

This manual collection is no longer required. 

There is an existing automated data collection in place to capture COVID-19 and flu vaccinations delivered to all cohorts, including frontline healthcare workers (HCWs)

This manual collection is no longer required. 

This collection was an interim aggregate collection designed to run for a limited period. The required data is now collected through DCB0011 Mental Health Services Data Set (MHSDS), which is a record level collection.

The submission of data for the period up to 31st March will be completed in April. The final publication will be issued, based on data to the end of March 2023, in May 2023.

This collection enabled the IUC Forecasting and Capacity Planning team to assess the effectiveness of call volume forecasting by 111 providers and the corresponding accuracy of staff profiling.

The data collection is no longer required as NHS111 providers are submitting workforce trajectories directly to the IUC policy team.

This one-off voluntary extract comprising data on influenza vaccinations given to unregistered patients by GP practices was intended to provide NHSE/I with information on uptake of the flu vaccination among these new eligible cohorts for the 2021-22 flu season.

This extract covered unregistered patients as follows:

• those living in residential care settings
• those who are housebound
• frontline health and social care workers, including primary care contractor staff and locum GPs.

This extract was incorporated into the General Practice Extraction Service (GPES) DAPB2090-2207 Seasonal Influenza extract for the next flu season.

This extraction from GP clinical systems was established in 2015 to monitor the number of dementia diagnoses against the target outlined in the Prime Minister's Challenge on Dementia.

In October 2022 the data items collected in DCB2090-2058 were incorporated into the data extraction DAPB2090-3010 Amd 53/2022 GPES: Core Contract, leading to the retirement of this separate DCB2090-2058 collection

This extraction from GP clinical systems was established in 2016 to monitor activity at GP practices associated with alcohol risk reduction

In October 2022 the data items collected in DCB2090-2190 were incorporated into the data extraction DAPB2090-3010 Amd 53/2022 GPES: Core Contract, leading to the retirement of this separate DCB2090-2190 collection

ISTV comprised a small de-identified dataset collected by Accident and Emergency (A&E) departments and shared with local Community Safety Partnerships (CSP) on a monthly basis. 

The standard is no longer required as ECDS v3.0 introduced all current ISTV data items on a pilot basis to allow required analysis. The intention is that ISTV data be collected via ECDS v4.0 from 1 July 2023, dual running with the ISTV collection until its retirement on 1 July 2024.

The briefing paper which was used as the basis of the approval of this deprecation is published alongside this Deprecation Notice.

Please note: the original deprecation date of 1 April 2023 and retirement date of 1 April 2024 have been extended to align with updated implementation timelines for ECDS v4.0.

In June 2022, due to concerns about monkeypox, and following a Civil Contingencies Act declaration, there was urgent need for a short-term, emergency collection about the prevalence of monkeypox in the UK. In order to support the national and regional response to the outbreak, data was collected on numbers of patients who tested positive for monkeypox (both inpatients, and those in virtual wards), as well as numbers of available beds.

Collection was stopped from 29 July 2022.

The weekly Oximetry @home Situation Report collection was two aggregate counts, the total number of patients onboarded to the service and a snapshot of numbers on service case load within a reporting period. Data was submitted by Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) to NHS Digital and a weekly situation report was then provided to NHS England and NHS Improvement.
The collection was initially approved, in response to the pandemic, until 31 March 2022 and later extended to 30 June 2022.

From 1 July 2022, NHS Digital will no longer centrally collect or report on data from the service. 

Although the collection will cease, the national supply of oximeters remains available to support COVID Oximetry @home services by request to NHS England. 

The National Diabetes Inpatient Audit (NaDIA), which was first approved in September 2017, is an annual snapshot of diabetes inpatient care in England and Wales, collected from hospitals with medical and surgical units. NaDIA allowed hospitals to benchmark diabetes care and to prioritise improvements in service provision that make a real difference to patient experiences and outcomes.

The audit has been retired as it is no longer relevant. This decision is supported by the National Diabetes Audit (NDA) Programme Executive Board, NDA Partnership Board, NaDIA Advisory Group and Contract Review meeting attendees. Stakeholders across these areas include NHS England, Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership, audit managers from NHS Digital, clinicians, analysts and patient representatives.

This information standard was designed to define the information required to support the implementation of the National Service Framework (NSF) for Renal Services and support the generation of person-based secondary-use data relating to renal services in England.

This standard is now out of date and DAPB is therefore deprecating this standard to ensure user awareness of the risks of continued use. Formal retirement of the standard is scheduled for 31 March 2023 and a Retirement Information Standards Notice (ISN) will be issued nearer this date.  

This information standard defined a set of Assessment, Discharge and Withdrawal (ADW) Notices to support compliance with the Care Act 2014. These Notices were used to support the discharge of hospital patients considered to have social care needs, and the information standard defined the minimum set of data items to be used for these Notices.

Following engagement with NHS England, Local Authorities, the Professional Record Standards Body (PRSB), suppliers and users, the NHS Digital developers of SCCI2075 agreed that no further development of the standard would occur, and that it would no longer be supported, as the product does not support current national government or NHS discharge policy, including Discharge to Assess (D2A).

The developer of SCCI2075 requested that it be formally retired as an information standard, and in June 2022 the Data Alliance Partnership Board approved this retirement. A supporting Information Standards Notice, confirming the retirement with immediate effect, was issued in July 2022.

This annual collection, owned and maintained by Public Health England, was a central collection of aggregated vaccine coverage data for monitoring and evaluating the national immunisation programmes. This collection incorporated the annual surveys for the pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine (PPV) vaccination and the pre-natal pertussis vaccination. Data was automatically extracted from GP IT systems and uploaded to the web-based platform ImmForm. 

In October 2021, the data items collected in SCCI2141 were incorporated into a number of separate, vaccine specific collections managed by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), leading to the retirement of this separate SCCI2141 collection.

This monthly collection, owned and maintained by Public Health England, was a central collection of aggregated vaccine coverage data for monitoring and evaluating the national immunisation programmes. Data from the following vaccination programmes was collected: routine rotavirus infant programme, selective adult shingles programme and selective pre-natal pertussis vaccination programme. Data was automatically extracted from GP IT systems and uploaded to the web-based platform ImmForm. 

In October 2021, the data items collected in SCCI2140 were incorporated into a number of separate, vaccine specific collections managed by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), leading to the retirement of this separate SCCI2140 collection.

Between 19 March and 31 August 2020, NHS Continuing Healthcare (NHS CHC) assessments were deferred. From 1 September 2020, local health and care systems resumed NHS CHC assessment activity and this collection supported the monitoring and reporting against clearance of the deferred NHC CHC assessments.

Data collection ceased in June 2021 and all deferred assessments have been completed.

This data collection reported on the number and proportion of patients aged 75 and over admitted as an emergency for more than 72 hours in England who were identified as potentially having dementia, were appropriately assessed and, where appropriate, referred on to specialist services.

The collection was launched in 2013/14 and was held on NHS Digital Strategic Data Collection Service (SDCS) from 2018 onwards;  in 2020 the submission of data for the DAR was paused.

Following consultation with stakeholders in 2020, NHS England and NHS Improvement (NHSEI) decided against restarting the collection and formally retired the DAR on 30 June 2021. NHSEI are looking to develop a more practical, quality focused and less burdensome alternative to the DAR in the future, to support the provision of care for people with delirium and dementia in hospital. 

This data collection covered activity relating to the NHS 111 First service, which encourages patients to call NHS 111 for triage before attending accident and emergency (A&E) services.

The collection was launched in 2021 and commissioners of Integrated Urgent Care (IUC) or NHS 111 services submitted aggregate data weekly to NHS England and NHS Improvement, via NHS Digital’s Strategic Data Collection Service (SDCS).

In June 2021, the data items collected in DCB3126 were incorporated into the collection DCB3031 Amd 6/2021 Integrated Urgent Care Aggregate Data Collection (IUC ADC), leading to the retirement of this separate DCB3126 collection.

This collection did not undergo a burden assessment.

This weekly collection, originally launched by the Department of Health and Social Care in 2011, asked NHS 111 providers to submit aggregate data in respect of calls to the NHS 111 service, including response times and recommendations. From 2017, data was submitted to NHS England and NHS Improvement via NHS Digital's Strategic Data Collection Service (SDCS) and the data was published as official statistics.

In June 2021, the data items collected in DCB3024 were incorporated into the collection DCB3031 Amd 6/2021 Integrated Urgent Care Aggregate Data Collection (IUC ADC), leading to the retirement of this separate DCB3024 collection.

This extraction of aggregated Shingles vaccination data from GP Clinical systems was established in 2016 to support direct payment to GP practices under the General Medical Services (GMS) contract and provide management information to NHS England and NHS Improvement.

In May 2021 the data items collected in DCB2090-2209 were incorporated into the data extraction DAPB2090-2208 Amd 28/2021 GPES: Shingles Combined Vaccination Programme, leading to the retirement of this separate DCB2090-2209 collection.

In April 2016, the General Practice Forward View (GPFV) set out NHS England’s approach to strengthening general practice. The GPFV included several commitments where routine data was not available to monitor progress in implementation and the impact on patients and DCB3019  was established to provide Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) level, aggregate data in areas such as online consultations, primary care networks, extended access to general practice and GP workforce in ‘alternative’ settings.

In 2020, NHS England and NHS Improvement consulted with stakeholders, including Regional Directors of Primary Care and Public Health and CCGs, to assess the data collection requirements. It was found that the measures in DCB3019 were out of date; as such, this collection has been superseded by the new Primary Care Monitoring Survey data collection (DCB3128), which incorporates the monitoring of required ongoing GPFV commitments. 

ISB 1572

Sensitive Data

ISB 1572, Sensitive Data, was published in March 1999 and set out rules for the removal of patient-identifiable data within the main NHS data sets of that time for specified diseases and operations.

This standard is now out of date and DCB is therefore deprecating this standard to ensure user awareness of the risks of continued use. Formal retirement of the standard has not yet been scheduled; this information will be updated with a formal retirement date once set. 

This was a quarterly collection of data on the number of patients on Care Programme Approach (CPA) followed up within 7 days of discharge from psychiatric inpatient care, and the number of inpatient admissions gate kept by Crisis Resolution Home Treatment (CRHT) teams.

In line with the 2019 CQUIN, providers are now required to follow-up all people discharged from hospital within 72 hours, meaning that the measure of 7 days recorded in this collection became outdated.

NHS England and NHS Improvement monitored the 2019/20 CQUIN using data from DCB0011 the Mental Health Services Data Set (MHSDS), and due to the sufficiency of the data quality, this measure was published as part of the Mental Health Services Monthly Statistics for the first time in July 2020.

NHSE/I consulted with stakeholders to assess whether DCB3054 should continue, and the responses indicated that the collection could be retired. Due to this, and the fact that the 72-hour measure data is captured in the MHSDS,  this collection (DCB3054)  has ceased with immediate effect.

DCB0103-02

Quarterly Diagnostics Census

This was a quarterly collection of aggregate data, submitted by Acute Trusts, about patients waiting six weeks or more for diagnostic tests, supplementary to the Diagnostics Waiting Times and Activity Monthly Return (DCB0103-01). 

Following consultation with key stakeholders of the collection, NHS England and NHS Improvement identified that the data from this quarterly collection was not utilised.

As such, this collection has ceased with immediate effect.

DCB3023-02

Quarterly Activity Return

This was a quarterly collection of aggregate data about inpatient and outpatient activity and referrals submitted by Acute Trusts, supplementary to the Monthly Activity Return (DCB3023-01).

NHS England and NHS Improvement identified that the data items in this quarterly collection are also available in  other data collections and the duplication of collection has caused undue burden on providers.

As such, this collection will cease following the submission and publication of data for Quarter 4 of 2019-20 financial year. No data will be submitted from Quarter 1 of the 2020-21 financial year onwards. 

SCCI2090-2200

GPES: Avoiding Unplanned Admissions

This extraction was designed to help reduce avoidable unplanned hospital admissions, by improving services for vulnerable patients and those with complex physical or mental health needs who are at high risk of admission or re-admission.

The collection has been discontinued as the Avoiding Unplanned Admissions Directed Enhanced Service (DES) was removed from the General Medical Service (GMS) contract on 31 March 2017. 

SCCI2166

GP Access Fund

The GP Access Fund data collection was created to explore methods and routes to improve access to general practice and stimulate innovative ways of providing primary care services. As a part of the Prime Minister’s GP Access Fund (GPAF) the programme was central to generating actionable learning for the wider NHS, allowing identification of issues and opportunities commissioners and provider innovation. 

As this collection was a time limited initiative, and is no longer included in the General Medical Service (GMS) contract, it has been retired. 

SCCI2144

Primary care extended access

This collection was created to monitor the availability of pre-bookable appointments in general practice, seven days a week.

NHS England and NHS Improvement are evaluating their data collections with a view to ceasing those collections of lower value to reduce unnecessary burden on the NHS. As part of this evaluation, the ‘Primary care extended access’ data collection was selected for retirement as data on the number of appointments attended out of core hours can now be obtained via the separate data collection ‘DCB3018 GP Appointments data’. 
 

SCCI2192

Prevent - Anti Radicalisation Training Questionnaire

 This was a one-off collection, commissioned by the Department of Health and Social Care and the Home Office, and collected by NHS England. The collection was designed to evaluate the Prevent Anti-Radicalisation Training that was delivered to clinical frontline staff in England. 

SCCI2127

Early Intervention in Psychosis (EIP) Referral to Treatment (RTT)

This was a monthly collection, commissioned by NHS England and collected by NHS Digital from Mental Health Trusts. The collection was established in 2015, to support the implementation of the Early Intervention in Psychosis (EIP) Access and Waiting Time standard, as outlined in the 'Forward View into action: NHS England’s Planning Requirements for Commissioners', and it monitored both the waiting times of people commencing treatment and those waiting for treatment. 

This collection was designed as an interim collection to run for limited period, until analysis of EIP RTT data could be undertaken using data from the Mental Health Services Data Set (MHSDS). In 2019, analysis of EIP RTT data from the MHSDS was achieved, enabling the retirement of this collection.

ISB 1500 - ISB 1508

Common User Interface (CUI) standards

The nine Common User Interface standards were approved by the Information Standards Board (ISB) in 2010 to allow for a common interface for healthcare IT systems.

The standards are now out of date, and should not be relied on for interface design; and the Data Coordination Board approved the deprecation of these standards in June 2019, with formal retirement of the standards scheduled for June 2020.

More information about the deprecation of CUI can be found on our CUI web page. 

DCB2138

NHS Flu Vaccination Service – Patient Questionnaire

This was a mandatory annual collection held over four consecutive years, commissioned by NHS England for all NHS Pharmacies in England. Pharmacies asked their patients to complete a copy of the national questionnaire following administration of the flu vaccine. 

NHS England and the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee (PSNC) have agreed that, since 99% of respondents would recommend the service and were either satisfied or highly satisfied with the service, the questionnaire has served its original purpose and will not be included in future service specifications. PSNC will make a tool available to community pharmacies to record feedback if any patient still expresses a desire to do so.

SCCI2199

Patient Objections Management (non GPES sites)

This was a mandatory monthly collection of patient objections information from General Practices via Secure Electronic File Transfer (SEFT). The information was used to monitor the number of patient objections and enable NHS Digital to ensure that the wishes of patients who had recorded a type 2 objection, or the withdrawal of a type 2 objection, were respected.

This manual collection is no longer required as it has been superseded by DCB3058 Compliance with National Data Opt-outs; the last manual collection of data took place in October 2018.

SCCI2090-2144

GPES: Patient Objections Management

This was a mandatory monthly extraction of patient objections information from General Practices via General Practice Extraction Service (GPES). The information was used to monitor number of patient objections and enable NHS Digital to ensure that the wishes of patients who had recorded a type 2 objection, or the withdrawal of a type 2 objection, were respected.

This GPES extraction is no longer required as it has been superseded by DCB3058 Compliance with National Data Opt-outs; the last extraction of data took place in October 2018.

SCCI2223 

Annual uses of the Mental Health Act 1983 in English acute trusts

This mandatory collection was established in 2016 to provide a full national understanding of uses of the Mental Health Act 1983 in English acute trusts, following the retirement of ISB 0154 KP90: Uses of the Mental Health Act in October 2015.

SCCI2223 ensured that acute trusts could submit Mental Health Act data whilst DCB0092-2062 Emergency Care Data Set (ECDS) was designed and implemented. As the ECDS is now implemented and collecting Mental Health Act 1983 data this separate collection, last run between May and June 2018, is no longer required.

ISB 1553 and ISB 1552

Read Clinical Terms Version 2 and Version 3

Read Codes are a coded thesaurus of clinical terms. Read Codes have two versions: Version 2 (v2) and version 3 (CTV3 or v3), which are the basic means by which clinicians record patient findings and procedures in health and social care IT systems across primary and secondary care.

Read v2 was deprecated as an information standard by the Information Standards Board (ISB) in December 2010 but no formal Notice was issued pending the determination of a withdrawal schedule; following approval by the Standardisation Committee for Care Information (SCCI), a Notice confirming the schedule was published in December 2014. Read v2 ceased to be maintained following the final release in April 2016 and is due to be formally retired in April 2020.

Read v3 (CTV3) was deprecated as an information standard by SCCI and a Notice confirming the deprecation was published in December 2014. Read v3 (CTV3) ceased to be maintained following the final release in April 2018 and is due to be formally retired in April 2020.