General Practice Extraction Service (GPES)
General Practice Extraction Service (GPES) collects information and data for a wide range of purposes including providing GP payments. It works in conjunction with the Calculating Quality Reporting System (CQRS) and GP clinical systems as part of the NHS England’s GP collections service.
GPES is made up of:
- General Practice Data Collector (GPDC) – a system used to request, collect, and process data from each GP system supplier and deliver it to the intended recipient. GPDC is hosted by the Data Delivery Centre (DDC) on the Secondary Uses Service (SUS)+ infrastructure
- General Practice Extraction Tool - Extraction (GPET-E) are extraction tools designed by clinical system suppliers
The types of data GPES can collect
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.
Organisations we collect information from
- 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
How GP collections work
A limited number of practices are classified as ‘shared’. These practices are excluded from all GPES collections.
This is usually because shared practices’ data is kept on a shared database and there is a small risk that incorrect or duplicated data could be collected by GPES, which could lead to issues with payment and information governance.
This exclusion list is agreed with suppliers every quarter and applied when the live scheduling takes place.
Automated collection
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
Manual collection
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.
Requesting a new GPES automated collection
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.
Contact details
Business rules and GPES extracts technical specification queries: To raise any question related to business rules and technical specification for GPES extracts please raise your questions via our contact centre at [email protected].
CQRS contact details: For questions about data on CQRS, please contact CQRS team at [email protected].
Further information
Find out more about how we ensure we manage and share information collected via GPES safely and securely.
NHS England is responsible for producing and maintaining the extraction specification (business rules) for Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF), Enhanced Services (ES), Vaccinations and Immunisations V&I, certain elements of Core Contact (CC) and other services commissioned by the Department of Health and Social Care.
Last edited: 17 February 2025 4:36 pm