Monthly Improving Access to Psychological Therapies Data Quality Reports - Final November and provisional December 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).

Please note: we have made an amendment to the rules for assessing the validity of the Social Phobia Score to correct an error.  This resulted in 2% of records being wrongly categorised but had no impact on published activity measures.