General Practice Extraction Service (GPES)

GPES can collect 2 different types of information:

• effectively anonymised data that does not 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. 

• NHS England information is used to collect GP payments, based on achievements under the Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) and the delivery of quality services
• other government departments for information about certain medical conditions and GP activity
• universities and other organisations for academic research and services such as screening programmes

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

• GPs record activity in their clinical systems for the services they provide
• NHS England or another organisation, requests information about a particular GP service
• area teams offer GPs the option to participate in collections for that service
• GPs agree to participate in collections for that service on CQRS
• we collect information from GP clinical systems using GPES over a specified period
• if required, GP staff enter information manually into CQRS
• we display the information we collect in CQRS
• GPs check that the information collected is the same as is in their clinical system
• if it's payment related, General Practice ‘declare' information from the collection to Regional Local Offices who approve via CQRS
• we provide the information to the organisation that requested it

Some GP information, including enhanced services data needs to be inputted by hand into CQRS.

This is either because the service has not yet been set up for automated collection, or because the organisation requesting the information has not chosen this method. 

Once the data has been inputted into the system the manually collected information is processed and displayed in CQRS in the same way as automatically collected data.

If a service needs to be manually inputted we provide GPs with a user guide to explain this process and also inform GPs before this process starts. 

The GP Extraction Service (GPES) is currently at maximum capacity. However, we are still open to discussing future new work requests in the event that we are either able to accommodate your request, or capacity is made available. We also want to ensure that we are capturing demand for GPES as a service.

Please contact [email protected] to discuss any requests further.