Data Collection and Improvement Service

The Data Collection and Improvement team was formed in 2023 and significantly transformed in late 2023 following the merger of NHS Digital with NHS England and HEE.

The overall aim of the service is to collect and improve health and social care data to support the delivery and improvement of services. We do this through our four main service areas:

Data collection

The Data Collection team is responsible for managing collections and submissions from health and social care providers and delivering support across a range of data collection systems.

In 2023 around 27 separate data collection systems and over 400 individual collections were identified, with around 100 collections being managed by the Data Collection and Improvement Service team. The agreed approach is to centralise the operational management of these collections.

Data coverage

The Data Coverage team is responsible for maximising the coverage of data collections. This requires agreeing with collection owners which providers should be submitting each collection, monitoring submissions, and working with any non-submitting providers to achieve 100% coverage (all providers who should submit data actually do submit the data).

This includes understanding the issues faced by non-submitting providers and collating this into themes for the collection owner.

Data improvement

The Data Improvement team is responsible for improving the usefulness of priority data collections. This is a directly commissioned service which involves building long-term trusted relationships with health and social care providers through named data liaison managers. This approach has shown to be effective across care domains with supporting providers to improve the data submitted nationally.

Management information

The Management Information team is responsible for sourcing and using data to improve the effectiveness of the services delivered by the Data Collection and Improvement Service team

Emergency Care Dataset (ECDS)

The Data Collection and Improvement Service have been commissioned to provide intensive support to ECDS submitters on an ongoing basis since late 2020. An initial focus has been on Type 1 (ED) departments which has been expanded to cover Urgent Treatment Centres (T3) from 2022/23.

The Data Collection and Improvement Service have been commissioned to:

• each region has a dedicated and named Data Liaison Manager to provide proactive and reactive support via regular engagement
• develop an enhanced breakdown report of invalid ECDS records to help work with sites to support data improvement
• run a monthly ECDS User Group, details of which can be found via the ECDS Forum collaboration space

For more information, contact Aaron Leathley.

Mental Health Services Dataset (MHSDS)

The Data Collection and Improvement Service have been commissioned to:

• engage and support providers already submitting to the MHSDS to improve the quality of the data across a range of policy areas
• engage and support providers who are registered or have previously submitted to the MHSDS but are not currently able to submit
• support providers with changes to dashboards, reporting and publications
• contact in-scope providers not yet submitting to the MHSDS and support them through registration and onboarding
• make monthly submissions and guide them through any DQ or validation queries they might have

For more information, contact Ryan Davies.

Community Services Dataset (CSDS)

The Data Collection and Improvement Service have been commissioned to:

• support providers who are determined to be in scope of submitting to the CSDS, taking them through the registration and onboarding process up to the point of their first submission
• support existing providers to improve the data within their submissions in specific policy areas

For more information, contact Ryan Davies.

Discharge Ready Date (CDS and FDF)

The Data Collection and Improvement Service have been commissioned to:

• provide 1:1 support to Acute Trusts with the collection and submission of Discharge Ready Date data to APC CDS and the Faster Data Flows (FDF) collections
• the NHS are committed to developing a new metric that measures the time between a patient no longer meeting the criteria to reside (their “Discharge Ready Date”) and their actual date of discharge, to be published for all systems ahead of winter 2023
• the collection of Discharge Ready Date data is therefore a key requirement and should be collected and input into an EPR system for all admitted patients with a stay of one night or longer

For more information about the project, please contact Aaron Leathley.

ERP Support: National Reporting

The Data Collection and Improvement Service have been commissioned to:

• under the Frontline Digitisation Programme, Data Collection and Improvement provide dedicated support for providers to continue to submit national data after EPR go-live without disruption, omission or delays to submissions
• trusts going through an EPR implementation can access Data Collection and Improvement Service support pre and post go-live. Support may consist of reviewing current national submissions, supporting mitigation of risks, help with successful testing of migrated data and understanding validation reports
• support production of case studies and lessons learned for reporting from previous EPR implementations

For more information, contact [email protected].

The Data Collection and Improvement team was established to engage with:

• emergency care submitters
• mental health services
• community services
• acute trusts 

For more information contact, [email protected].