Monthly Improving Access to Psychological Therapies Data Quality Reports - Final December and provisional January 2014

The Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) dataset is a regular return of data generated by providers of NHS-commissioned IAPT services in England (including services provided by independent organisations). It was mandated as a monthly return from 1 April 2012 and collects details of all people accessing these services. Submissions are received by the Health and Social Care Information Centre as record-level anonymised data from patient-administration systems.

This publication comprises national and provider level data quality measures of some key data items in the dataset: NHS number; postcode; gender; ethnicity; code of commissioner; general medical practice code; mental health care cluster; religious belief; sexual orientation; provisional diagnosis; source of referral; Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ 9) score; Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD) score; appointment type; therapy type; disability; IAPT care pathway end reason; code of IAPT stepped to provider; stepped care intensity delivered; employment status; psychotropic medication use; statutory sick pay indicator; the five component parts of the work and social adjustment score (work, home management, social leisure activities, private leisure activities and relationships); anxiety disorder specific measures; reason for suspension of activity. These measures are provided as both counts and percentages of all eligible IAPT records and will be of interest to stakeholders (e.g. the Department of Health and service commissioners), data providers and users of our statistics (e.g. mental health organisations including charities, and service users and their representatives).

This monthly file also contains activity data detailing the number of referrals received, entering treatment and completing treatment in the month, by Commissioner for October.

Some changes to the methodology used in this analysis are described in the Methodological Change paper. The Methodological Change paper and rules for the Data Quality Measures are referenced in the Related Links below.

General Notes

The Health and Social Care Information Centre does not presently have permission to hold person-identifiable data. It is therefore only been possible to validate person-identifiable data items such as NHS number and Postcode by using data items which have been derived from these items (as specified in the validation rules).

From this release onwards the range of Social Phobia Score values that will be considered valid in Data Quality VODIM measures will be 0-68. Previously, for data from July up to and including November 2014, the range of these values considered valid was 0-8. This minor change has been made as result of feedback from providers and will have a minimal impact on one VODIM measure of one field of the dataset. This change will not impact upon the analysis of activity data nor on the calculation of recovery rates as these processes are entirely separate from the VODIM process to which the change is being applied.

Changes to reporting of monthly IAPT statistics:

Please note that this release will be the last in this format. In response to user requirements, from April 2015 the monthly IAPT dataset releases will be expanded to include additional data quality metrics, a machine readable file containing over 70 activity measures, a supporting metadata file, and a complementary Executive Summary which will detail key measures and provide some national time series analysis. The monthly spreadsheet containing activity measures will be discontinued but these measures will be included in the suite of activity measures in the machine readable file.

A methodological change paper has been issued to describe these changes:

Methodological changes to IAPT reporting