General Practice Extraction Service

Following an annual review, requests for GPES data collections during the financial year 2017/18 are now closed. Each year NHS Digital, together with NHS England, reviews capacity on the GPES platform, which changes as collections are modified or retired. Any spare capacity is reviewed and requests are prioritised to achieve maximum benefit.

We will be accepting 2018/19 data collection applications around November 2017. Submitting a request does not guarantee we can accommodate it within the available capacity of the system, but each application will be considered on its merit and benefit.

If you have any queries, please contact us at enquiries@nhsdigital.nhs.uk.

GPES can collect 2 different types of information:

• effectively anonymised data that doesn't reveal an individual's identity
• patient-identifiable data (PID), that may identify an individual, such as a name, date of birth or postcode

PID data is only used when information is permitted by law or supports direct benefits to patient care. Find out more about how we look after health and care information.

We gather information and data, which is copied in to our systems. Data is collected automatically over a specified period of time - this is known as an extract. We normally use the following process:

1. GPs record activity in their clinical systems for the services they provide.
2. NHS England, or another organisation, requests information about a particular GP service.
3. NHS England area teams offer GPs the option to participate in collections for that service.
4. GPs agree to participate in collections for that service on CQRS.
5. We collect information from GP clinical systems using GPES over a specified period.
6. If required, GP staff enter information manually into CQRS.
7. We display the information we collect in CQRS.
8. GPs check that the information collected is the same as is in their clinical system.
9. If it's payment related, GPs 'declare' information from the collection to Regional Local Offices - who approve via CQRS.
10. We provide the information to the organisation that requested it.
     

Manual collection

Some GP information needs to be inputted by hand into CQRS, including some Enhanced Services. This is either because the service hasn't yet been set up for automated collection, or the organisation requesting the information hasn't chosen this method. 

Once entered, manually collected information is processed and displayed in CQRS in the same way as automatically collected data. We advise GPs in advance if a service needs to be manually inputted and we provide CQRS user guides explaining this process.

Find out more about GP Collections.

Requests for information are assessed by our information governance system for risks and benefits and to determine whether they are in the public interest. From May 2012 to June 2015, applications for data extracts to GPES were assessed by the Independent Advisory Group (IAG). 

The old IAG documents are available on The National Archives.

To use the General Practice Extraction Service (GPES), complete the following training steps:

Step 1

Read the Quick reference guide and user guide training documents.

Step 2

Contact your Registration Authority and ask for the following Role Based Access Control (RBAC) codes to be added to your Smartcard:

• B1842 - Request GPES ad-hoc data extraction (GP practice)
• B1843 - View GPES query results (GP practice)
• B1844 - Maintain GPES participation preferences (GP practice)
• B1845 - Record GPES participation decisions (GP practice)

Step 3

Make sure you have Java version 1.6 or above and identity client version 13.0.1 installed on your computers (as advised by your local IT service provider).

Step 4

Log in to GPES with your Smartcard. For support call 0300 303 5678 or contact enquiries@nhsdigital.nhs.uk.

Step 5

Select 'Set Preferences' from the homepage to set your practice's GPES preferences.