Independent Healthcare Provider Workforce Statistics - March 2022, Experimental

This page aims to provide users with an evidence-based assessment of the quality of the statistical content of this publication by reporting against those of the nine European Statistical System (ESS) quality dimensions and principle[1] appropriate to this output. In doing so, this meets our obligation to comply with the UK Statistics Authority (UKSA) Code of Practice for Statistics[2], particularly the Pillar of Quality, Principle 3 “Q3 Assured quality”, which states: 

"Producers of statistics and data should explain clearly how they assure themselves that statistics and data are accurate, reliable, coherent and timely."

NHS Digital seeks to minimise inaccuracies and the effect of missing and invalid data but ultimate responsibility for data accuracy lies with the organisations providing the data.

NHS Digital continues to work closely with IHP organisations on the data quality of their submissions and has seen improvements in the completion of key fields since the data was first collected and published. This has allowed for a greater breakdown of the IHP statistics over time. It is hoped that the move towards a greater focus on individual organisations will further help to increase the accuracy for the data as those organisations are better able to understand the wider context of the data they have provided.

Due to issues around the completeness of key fields which prevent identification and removal of duplicates, it is not currently possible to provide headcount information for records received via the wMDSCV. For information on workforce characteristics (e.g., age, gender, ethnicity etc.) to be truly meaningful, we normally publish headcount figures, but can currently only provide Full Time Equivalent (FTE) figures. We keep this under review and hope to provide some level of headcount information in the future as further improvements in data quality and completeness are made.  

The data submitted via the wMDSCV does not allow some of the refinements to be made that can be applied to ESR data and therefore may include staff on maternity leave and career breaks, for example. Bank and casual staff are excluded where it is possible to do so from both data sources.

Where no FTE values are provided, a mixture of contracted hours, standard hours, and Nature of Contract (NoC) are used to assign an FTE to all records.

For records with no FTE or valid contracted hours and standard hours provided, an FTE value has been assigned based on available NoC. If a record had a NoC = 1 (full-time) the record was assigned an FTE of 1, if a record had a NoC = 2 (part-time) the record was assigned an FTE of 0.5.

For a small number of organisations, where the contracted hours equalled the standard hours, a new FTE was calculated based on 37.5 hours being one FTE and under 37.5 hours being a part-time FTE.

Where Occupation Codes are missing or incomplete, some substitutions are made based on available information, for example Job Role.

Since September 2019, to maximise the potential impact of these improvements, NHS Digital have provided more detailed data back to individual organisations who submit via the wMDSCV. This allows individual IHPs to identify themselves more clearly, helps them to better understand their workforce and to begin to benchmark themselves against the NHS and the other IHPs for which we receive data. Individual feedback reports will be provided until all IHP organisations are identified in the publication series.

This publication series continues to build on the previous Healthcare Workforce Statistics publication but relates only to the IHP Workforce.

An aspect of the changes leading to the development of the previous Healthcare Workforce Statistics publication and subsequent IHP Workforce publication series has been to move all published statistics on Social Enterprises and Community Interest Companies available through ESR from our NHS HCHS statistics and include them in the IHP Workforce statistics from 30 September 2015 onwards. This has reduced the figures that were traditionally quoted as NHS. This action was also applied to private companies that are using ESR as a payment system. More detail on the numbers of staff affected are included in Appendix 2 of the Table file which accompanies this publication.

No nationally recognised pay scale information is available for data provided via the wMDSCV, therefore no indication of grade for medical and dental staff has been provided. Consideration is being given to how more detailed information can be provided for medical and dental staff, for example to give an indication of those staff involved in General Medical Practitioner type roles and to give more information regards the specialty practiced by others.

Due to the data quality and completeness issues described in the ‘Accuracy’ section, a direct comparison of the IHP Workforce with the wider healthcare workforce is not possible at this time.

Whilst it is not possible to directly compare different time periods within the information relating to the IHP Workforce, due to it being an incomplete and developing data set, all data periods have been presented in the publication for completeness. As the number of organisations included is set to increase over time and as issues with data submission and data quality are worked upon, it is expected that the numbers published will change. These changes should not be inferred to be a growth or decline in the size of the total IHP Workforce. It is hoped that as the collection develops a much greater percentage of this workforce will be included and that comparisons may be possible then, but until that is the case NHS Digital advise against comparing different time periods within the data.

More detailed statistics will be made available in future publications as a greater proportion of IHP organisations are included in the collection. NHS Digital continue to work with Health Education England (HEE) and other partners to increase the coverage of the data collected through engagement with individual IHP organisations and their representatives.

The IHP Workforce data is made available as soon as possible after it has been validated and compiled. As the process matures and improvements are made, it is hoped that this interval will decrease.

Further analysis of the IHP Workforce may be available on request via the Contact Centre, subject to resource limits and compliance with confidentiality and disclosure control requirements.

This publication continues to provide more detailed information on the IHP Workforce beyond absolute numbers. NHS Digital plans to continue to increase the information available about the IHP Workforce as part of future publications, subject to satisfactory investigation of the data and agreement with relevant stakeholders. This publication increases the accessibility of the underlying data by including tables which show the data to a more granular geographical level. Further plans to add value are described in more detail in the sections above. As this is now a standalone publication series, the opportunity exists to further enhance the data published and comments and suggestions for investigation are welcomed from users of the data as detailed in the ‘Feedback’ section below.

Relevance of the NHS and wider healthcare workforce information is maintained by reference to working groups who oversee both data and reporting standards. Major changes to either are subject to approval by the Data Coordination Board (DCB) which replaced the Standardisation Committee for Care Information (SCCI) from 1 April 2017. More information about the DCB can be found at http://digital.nhs.uk/isce

NHS Digital has worked with representatives of IHP organisations throughout the development of the wMDS and continues to do so to ensure that the data collected and published is relevant to them.

Significant changes to workforce publications (e.g., frequency or methodology) are subject to consultation, in line with the Code of Practice for Statistics.

More minor changes, such as the inclusion of additional tables of analyses, will be highlighted to users of our statistics (via stakeholder and user contacts / groups), as well as being made available on the NHS Digital website. In this way NHS Digital seeks to maximise the relevance of the publication by keeping pace with the changing requirements of the users.

The statistics for approximately 41% of IHP organisations that are included in this publication are directly extracted from ESR to assist in the reduction of the burden on IHP organisations. To keep the burden of this collection at the minimum for IHP organisations who do not use the ESR, the secure wMDSCV data submission portal (https://wmdscv.digital.nhs.uk/) includes inbuilt validations.

The standard NHS Digital data security and confidentiality policies have been applied in the production of these statistics

Please see links below to relevant NHS Digital policies:

Data

Data security and information governance

Freedom of Information Process:

Codes of practice on confidential information

Privacy and cookies

Following consultation, NHS Digital now provides a list of submitters, with the intention to provide more detail and enhance benchmarking information as part of the development of future publications in the series. All the data published remains at an aggregate level and no individual person can be identified from the published data.

The agreement to not identify individual IHP organisations in the data is being reviewed in response to requests from stakeholders and representatives of the IHP organisations to increase the utility and relevance of the data. Any changes to increase the granularity of the published data will be undertaken in consultation with the representatives of the data providers and in accordance with all relevant policies and procedures to ensure that no details regarding an individual (or small number of individuals) are inadvertently revealed as part of the analysis of the data.

Whilst it is not possible to directly compare different time periods within the information relating to the IHP Workforce, due to it being an incomplete and developing data set, all periods of data have been presented in the accompanying tables for completeness.

We therefore include below details of revisions and issues made to earlier releases:

The IHP Workforce was previously referred to as the Independent Sector Healthcare Provider Workforce (ISHP) in the Healthcare Workforce Statistics series. Though the naming is slightly different, the definitions are the same.

During the validation of data for the March 2017 release an issue was discovered whereby records for some staff with multiple registrations were being duplicated via submission through the wMDSCV. This issue would have been present for previous submissions but at this point it was too late to correct the earlier data. Therefore, this data quality improvement will have reduced the figures provided as at 31 March 2017 relative to previous periods. NHS Digital ensured that the duplication issue was then removed at an earlier stage of validation, allowing increased comparability and reliability for the data as at 30 September 2017 onwards.

During the validation of the data for the September 2016 release, NHS Digital became aware that the decrease in overall FTE presented for the March 2016 and September 2016 releases were primarily due to one IHP organisation closing and transferring most of its staff and services to an NHS Trust.

During the final validation of the data for the March 2016 release, an issue relating to the data published in the September 2015 release was identified. Following a consideration of the drop in figures provided, NHS Digital were informed that some of the records returned for the September 2015 collection actually related to bank rather than permanent staff. It was not possible to revise the published September 2015 figures as the information held by NHS Digital does not allow the separate identification of the relevant records to exclude.

For one organisation, no FTE, contracted hours or NoC data was available, so an FTE of 0.5 was assigned to all records to allow their inclusion in the figures, for data relating to both September 2015 and  March 2016. The organisation resolved this issue ahead of their September 2016 data submission, so the update was no longer necessary.

One data provider was unable to make a valid submission for September 2015, so we included data based on the data they provided as part of a pilot exercise for the March 2015 collection, as they made a valid submission and with their agreement it allowed their inclusion in the initial publication. The issue was resolved for subsequent data submissions.

We welcome comments to ensure that our publications are as useful and informative as possible and will consider these comments to inform production of future reports. The changes implemented in this publication and proposed for future updates to the publication series are the result of user feedback, and more feedback is very much appreciated.

Please contact us with your comments and suggestions, clearly stating ‘Independent Healthcare Provider Workforce Statistics: England’ as the subject heading, via:

Email:  [email protected]

Telephone:  0300 303 5678

Post:  7 & 8 Wellington Place, Leeds, LS1 4AP