This monthly report of Out of Area Placements should be interpreted with caution, as with the previous reports in this series. The Limitations section sets out these issues more fully.
This month, 43 organisations have participated in this collection, out of 57 organisations in scope. This means that 75 per cent of organisations have participated. The definition of participation can be found on page 5 of the report.
COVID-19 and the production of statistics
Due to the coronavirus illness (COVID-19) disruption, it would seem that this is now starting to affect the quality and coverage of some of our statistics, such as an increase in non-submissions for some datasets. We are also starting to see some different patterns in the submitted data. For example, fewer patients are being referred to hospital and more appointments being carried out via phone/telemedicine/email. Therefore, data should be interpreted with care over the COVID-19 period.
STP and CCG reconfiguration
A number of changes to NHS organisations were made operationally effective from 1 April 2020. These changes included: 74 former Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) merging to form 18 new CCGs; alterations to commissioning hubs; provider mergers; and the incorporation of Sustainability and Transformation Partnerships (STPs) into the NHS commissioning hierarchy. The Organisation Data Service (ODS) is responsible for publishing organisation and practitioner codes, along with related national policies and standards. A series of ODS data amendments are required to support the introduction of these changes. This would normally result in a number of organisations becoming ‘legally’ closed including the 74 former CCGs. However, to minimise any burden to the NHS during the COVID-19 pandemic and remove any non-critical activity, these organisations remain open within ODS data. ODS aim to both legally and operationally close predecessor organisations involved in April 2020 Reconfiguration on 30 September 2020.
As all former and current organisations remain legally open, all are presented within this publication. Activity may be recorded against either former or current organisations, depending on data providers and processors ability to transition to the new organisation codes at this time. The same activity will not be recorded against both former and current organisations. NHS Digital are working to understand the implications of this on how you can interpret these statistics and will provide more information in future editions of this publication series.