Secondary Uses Service what's new

ACTION REQUIRED:  Changes to Organisation Code Formats

07/09/2020

From 30 September 2020 SUS+ will reject interchanges that contain an invalid code in the field “Organisation Code (Code of Provider)”.  

Further to the SUS What’s New announcement of 26/06/2020, the Organisation Data Service (ODS) has confirmed that they will change the format of new organisation codes issued on or after 1 October 2020.  This change makes it impossible for SUS+ to process invalid codes in the “Organisation Code (Code of Provider)” field. Further information is available in the original What’s New announcement dated 26/06/2020.

SUS+ Implementation of the 20/21 HRG Grouper V2 (Covid amendments)

30/07/2020

Version 2 of the 20/21 HRG Grouper has now been implemented in SUS+.

SUS+ 20/21 extracts can now be re-run and will derive the version 2 HRGs.

ACTION REQUIRED:  SUS+ submissions

26/06/2020

Due to upcoming changes in the format of organisation codes assigned by the Organisation Data Service (ODS) it is important that all care providers populate the field “Organisation Code (Code of Provider)” with a valid ODS code in all interchange submissions to SUS+. From 1 September 2020 SUS+ will be amended to reject interchanges that do not contain a valid ODS provider organisation code in the field “Organisation Code (Code of Provider)”.

Historically the organisation codes assigned by ODS have followed ‘frame’ format conventions.  These conventions enabled SUS to perform a certain amount of pre-processing to trim the last two digits from a site code to derive the Provider Organisation code.  From 1 September 2020 ODS will no longer follow the frame format conventions and will instead assign all new organisation codes in the format ANANA (where A- Alpha and N-Numeric).  From this point SUS will be unable to reliably pre-process incorrect codes and can only accept valid organisation codes that have been issued by the ODS.

From 1 July 2020 the Interchange Feedback emails, and Interchange Challenge report will be amended to warn of interchanges that would be rejected after 1 September 2020 due to invalid data in the “Organisation Code (Code of Provider)” Field. 

In addition, the Interchange Feedback emails will indicate instances where a provider site code is inserted in the “Organisation Code (Code of Provider)” field.  Provider site codes will be considered valid as it is a 5-character code however, records with a site code in the “Organisation Code (Code of Provider)” may not appear on provider extracts.

For example:

• if organisations submit a provider code of RR800, this will be rejected from September 2020
• if organisations submit a provider code of RR801, this will be accepted from September 2020, but will not match a smartcard role of RR8

SUS+ would expect a valid provider code of RR8 to be submitted for RR8 activity.

To see if your organisation is affected by these changes, please see the Monthly Trust Statement reports on the SUS+ Operational Support web page. The last column on the right shows the pre-trimmed provider codes.

https://digital.nhs.uk/services/secondary-uses-service-sus/secondary-uses-services-sus-operational-support

Also please note that only the contents of the “Organisation Code (Code of Provider)” field should be amended.  Other fields, including “CDS Sender Identity” and “CDS Interchange Sender Identity” are not impacted by this change.

Oxford University study into different treatment regimens for Covid-19 patients

25/06/2020

Email from OXFORD UNIVERSITY HOSPITALS NHS FOUNDATION TRUST to the SUS+ team.

You will have seen the news that dexamethasone is a useful drug in the fight against COVID-19. That result would not have been possible without this SUS+ dataset.

low-cost-dexamethasone-reduces-death-by-up-to-one-third-in-hospitalised-patients-with-severe-respiratory-complications-of-covid-19

There are other arms in the study still to be analysed with this data feed.

So, keep up the good work!

ECDS update

01/06/2020

Please be aware of this important update regarding Emergency Care Data Set (ECDS) submissions.

NHS England has notified NHS Digital of an intention to uplift the ECDS information standard during 2020, and work has started in preparation for the first early adopter sites to begin data submission from 1 January 2021. 

Enabling implementation of new ECDS fields will require an updated ECDS XML schema, namely CDS 6.2.3. Enabling CDS 6.2.3 will mean that the oldest schema in use, CDS 6.2.1, needs to be turned off.

Please note that conformance with the latest ECDS information standard, using CDS 6.2.2 was 1 April 2019. However, a number of NHS Trusts are still using CDS 6.2.1.

All Trusts still using CDS 6.2.1 should check their plans to migrate to CDS 6.2.2 as conformance is now more than twelve months overdue. Continued use of CDS 6.2.1 may delay the introduction of CDS 6.2.3.

Please see the table on the ECDS latest update page for information about ECDS XML schema versions.

For Solution Assurance queries, please contact: functional.assurance@nhs.netFor other ECDS queries, please contact: enquiries@nhsdigital.nhs.uk

The use of CDS data in the current crisis

28/05/2020

The SUS+ Team are conscious that they have not shared how provider CDS data is being used as part of the national Covid-19 related data analytics effort. 

• SUS+ Users may have heard of the Oxford University study into different treatment regimens for Covid-19 patients (it recently featured in a BBC Panorama documentary).  SUS+ has been sending APC data related to the patient cohort to the team at Oxford since early March 2020. The feedback that SUS+ has received from colleagues at Oxford is “SUS is easily the most important data source in the short-to-medium term (apart from the initial recruitment form, that is - consent is pretty important)".
• SUS+ has also been providing daily updates of APC and ECDS data to colleagues at PHE who are using it in the preparation of the analyses presented by the Prime Minister in the daily national briefings
• APC, ECDS and OP data are all now flowing daily into the new Data Processing System within NHS Digital.  There it is being linked to other datasets and is being used by our internal data analysts to identify potentially ground-breaking patterns in the data.
• NHS England is also getting daily updates of APC, ECDS and OP data which they are using to produce analyses.

The SUS+ team tends to get thanked for this data because it looks like the data comes from SUS+. Though, we all know where it comes from and why it is useful.  The thanks and recognition belong first and foremost with everyone at every care provider who works to collect, code, and submit the data to SUS+.

The SUS+ Team also wanted to assure you that any efforts you make to get the data in more quickly and/or more accurately have an immediate national impact.  The day after SUS+ receives a record, it is sent on to these analysts.  The days of updates languishing in the SUS+ waiting for a monthly extract to be taken are over.

UK FHIR Core Consultation

27/05/2020

The UK FHIR Core consultation has now been issued and can be shared as required: 

If anyone would like to join the DCB mailing list (and receive such notifications) they can either:

• send an email to the Data Standards Assurance Service mailbox standards.assurance@nhs.net, requesting to join the DCB mailing list, or
• use the NHS Digital online form and select the ‘Information Standards Notices (Data Coordination Board) option. 

Commissioner Assignment Method (CAM) in SUS+

22/05/2020

SUS+ currently reflects the 18/19 CAM algorithm within the fields "Derived Commissioner" and "Derived Commissioner Type" in PbR and unified extract formats.  These fields were included to provide an indication of the commissioner as determined by the CAM algorithm and were not intended to be definitive.  We have had a number of queries regarding the accuracy of the derivations in these fields and will incorporate the algorithms consistent with activity years in the coming months.  In the meantime please be aware that the contents of these fields are indicative only.

ADAPt consultation extended

07/05/2020

The public consultation for the Acute Data Alignment Programme (ADAPt) has been extended on Citizenspace until 22 May 2020.

20/21 PbR Implementation in SUS+

30/04/2020

As part of last night's SUS+ release the 20/21 PSS Grouper was made live in the system.

SUS+ ECDS SNOMED code lists

17/04/2020

As part of last night's SUS+ release the ECDS SNOMED approved code list was updated in the system. 

ECDS SNOMED approved code list

ECDS SNOMED mapped code list

Weekly SUS+ release delayed

15/04/2020

Due to unforeseen circumstances, tonight's scheduled SUS+ release (15/04/2020) has been postponed until the evening of Thursday 16 April 2020.

We apologise for the inconvenience. 

20/21 PbR Implementation in SUS+

15/04/2020

The following configuration of PbR elements are currently implemented in SUS+. 

Further details regarding each element are available from the relevant teams.

20/21 Local Payment Grouper

20/21 PSS Consultation Grouper

20/21 Consultation Tariff

This is so that SUS+ has a full set of 20/21 rules and prices in place for 20/21 data.  The pending revision of OPCS meant SUS+ could potentially get valid codes that would not group and generate a UZ01Z, if the 20/21 grouper was not in SUS+. 

SUS+ will implement final 20/21 prices and PSS rules as soon as they become available. Once implemented these will be applied to extracts for 20/21 data.

SUS+ ECDS SNOMED codes

08/04/2020

The SUS team has been instructed to update the list of SNOMED codes valid for use in ECDS submissions to include codes related to the COVID pandemic.  This list will be updated and available for extract on 16 April 2020.  SUS currently suppresses invalid SNOMED codes in extracts of ECDS data and so these codes will not be present in extracts of ECDS data taken before this date.  There is no need for providers to resubmit data.  Codes in data provided to SUS before the 16 April will be present in extracts taken on or after that date. Details of the appropriate codes and coding can be found on the ECDS latest updates. 

SUS+ PbR extracts 20/21

08/04/2020

We have identified an issue impacting some PbR extracts for activity after 01 April 2020.  The issue causes the extract to ‘deadletter’ and appear ‘stuck’ on the portal screen. This is an intermittent problem and will not impact all extracts.  However, if an extract is impacted resubmitting the extract will not resolve the issue.  Our engineers have identified the problem and will have a solution implemented by 16/04/20. 

In the meantime users are requested not to resubmit PbR extract requests for 20/21 data to try to resolve extracts that are stuck.

We apologise for the inconvenience this has caused and thank you for your patience.

SUS+ March 2020 Inclusion

26/03/2020

Over the March 2020 inclusion period, SUS experienced an intermittent hardware fault that was not detected by our monitoring. The hardware fault has now been resolved however up to 0.4% of data was not included in the inclusion extracts. In order to protect daily extracts that are necessary for monitoring COVID-19 related activity, DSCROs have been asked to delay requesting large volumes of data until the weekend of 28 and 29 March 2020.

We apologise for the inconvenience this has caused and thank you for your patience.

SUS+ interchange challenge reports

11/03/2020

On the 4 March 2020, the SUS team implemented a change to send interchange challenge reports to the sender of the interchange instead of to the provider of the care. We did not, however, cater for a historical anomaly in the way that the Sender's EDI address is transmitted in the interchange.

This has meant that several organisations have stopped receiving interchange challenge reports. We are working on building a resolution for this problem, but we will not implement it until 25 March 2020. This is because we observe a change moratorium over each inclusion week.

We apologise for the inconvenience.

SUS+ provider code issue

05/03/2020

On Wednesday 26 February 2020, SUS+ deployed code to handle the upcoming ANANA org code changes. This deployment stopped SUS+ trimming inbound provider codes from 5 to 3 characters. “XXX00” provider codes were in SUS+ that did not match the smart card org roles of “XXX” when extracts were run by providers. This org code mismatch caused provider extracts to return zero record counts.

A hot fix was deployed in SUS+ to re-enable the trimming of 5-character provider codes at 6pm on Tuesday 3 March 2020.

BULK submitters are asked to re-submit interchanges to SUS+ since 6pm Wednesday 26 February 2020 to 6pm on Tuesday 3 March 2020 and the provider codes will be trimmed to 3 characters.

On Thursday 5 March 2020, SUS+ began replaying all NET interchanges sent to SUS+ since 6pm Wednesday 26 February 2020 to 6pm on Tuesday 3 March 2020, to enable provider codes to be trimmed to 3 character level.

During this time submitters will receive duplicate interchange progress emails and interchange DQ feedback reports.

We apologise for the inconvenience.

SUS+ Multi Tariff Processing

24/02/2020

SUS+ Multi Tariff Processing allows users to choose the financial year for a PbR extract. Both pricing reference data and the grouper for the selected year will be applied.

The extract format and column structure will be the same as that for the current financial year and users can construct their own extract.

The following SUS+ guidance documents have been updated

SUS+ Portal User Guide on SUS+ Guidance

SUS+ PbR Reference Manual on SUS+ PbR

Changes to the SUS+ Interchange Challenge Report

07/02/2020

The configuration of the SUS+ Interchange Challenge Report is changing. Challenges to records will be returned to the Mesh Mailbox associated with the cds interchange sender id (EDI address) of the sender, if this EDI address has opted in.  This has the outcome of allowing the sender (eg provider, third party) to receive the report and guards against incorrect submission of provider codes.

Both the CSV and JSONL will contain a Provider Code attribute, as per the updated interchange data quality specification.

This functionality will be live in SUS+ from 8pm on Wednesday 4 March 2020.

Archiving 2016/17 data from SUS+

27/01/2020

SUS+ supports two years plus the current year of active data for commissioning purposes. Data that is older than this is archived and will be held in SEM format and JSON format for extract by special request. The SUS+ team have not activated the archival over the last two years. We are going to re-instate this pattern starting with data for the 2016/17 financial year. This will include data for closed admitted patient care (APC), outpatient (OP) and accident & emergency (A&E). Any open admitted patient care spells with one or more episodes in the 2016/17 financial year will continue to be processed, including updates to the 2016/17 episode data.

We do not anticipate that providers will need to update 2016/17 data. However, we are giving notice that if any updates to this data are required they should be submitted to SUS by 5 February 2020. 

2016/17 data received after this data will not be included in the archived data (except for data related to open spells). 

From 6 February 2020 access to 2016/17 data will be removed from the SUS+ Portal and this data will only be available on request via the SUS+ Historical Data Request Form.

Admitted patient care data related to patients who were discharged after 31 March 2017 will continue to be available via the PbR extracts in the SUS Portal.

SUS+ Portal extracts issue

13/01/2020

Due to a coding issue released on Wednesday 8 January 2020, the ability to copy already run extracts or drafts on the SUS+ portal, is currently not available.

SUS+ has a code fix going in on Wednesday 15 January 2020. Until then, users will need to create extracts from scratch.

We apologise for the inconvenience.

SUS+ processing as normal

07/01/2020

SUS+ has resolved the issue of an interrupted interchange during processing and has unblocked the inbound queue.

Interchanges are processing and will take priority over extracts.

We apologise for any inconvenience. 

SUS+ inbound queue paused

07/01/2020

SUS+ has experienced a database node going down during processing of a cds interchange. To protect data integrity, SUS+ inbound queues have been paused since 8pm last night.

Engineers are investigating the impact of the downed database node and we will endeavour to re-establish SUS+ interchange processing as soon as possible.

We apologise for any inconvenience. 

SUS+ Annual User Satisfaction Survey 2019

11/11/2019

The annual SUS+ User Satisfaction Survey is now available to all SUS+ users.

Access the survey

Thank you for taking the time to complete this short survey.

SUS+ 2020-21 - Submission timetable published

04/11/2019

The SUS+ 2020-21 Submission timetable has been published on the SUS PbR Guidance webpages. The timetable contains details of 2020-21 financial year submission and publication dates for Reconciliation, Post-Reconciliation, HES deadlines and Annual HES Refresh inclusion dates.

Submitting data to SUS

25/09/2019

An updated Submitting data to SUS guidance document has been published on the SUS guidance web page 

EDT removed from SUS+

11/09/2019

Please note that External Data Transfer (EDT) was removed from SUS+ at 6pm on Wednesday 11/09/2019. 

The only way to submit interchanges to SUS+ now is via Message Exchange for Social Care and Health (MESH).

If you have not submitted interchanges to SUS+ via MESH yet, please contact your XML middleware supplier.

Notice of EDT deprecation re-published

14/08/2019

Please note that after 30 August 2019 the use of the Electronic Data Transfer (EDT) will no longer be supported by the SUS+ service. 

After 30 August 2019 only the Message Exchange for Social Care and Health (MESH) mechanism will be supported by the SUS+ service for the transfer of CDS interchange data.

If you have any issues with the removal of EDT after 30 August 2019, please  email sus@nhs.net

Same Day Emergency Care Survey

29/07/2019

The Same Day Emergency Care Survey is now available.

SUS+ Portal planned outage - Wednesday 17 July 2019

11/07/2019

Due to the planned Care Identity Service (CIS) essential maintenance outage on Wednesday 17 July 2019 from 18:30 to 23:59, the SUS+ Portal will not be available from 18:00 to 20:00.

SUS+ users who are required to run extracts after the inclusion deadline on 17 July 2019, should aim to run their extracts before 18:00, after 20:00 or utilise the SUS+ deferred extract functionality.

NHS Digital Provider and Commissioner Surveys

09/07/2019

NHS Digital is reviewing the way in which data is transmitted from NHS providers to NHS Digital for secondary uses. The aim is to identify ways to reduce duplication and simplify existing data submission processes.

Please can you complete our provider (Trust) or commissioning (CCG) surveys, which will enable us to capture at a high level, the impact, indicative costs and timescales for the adaption of your systems to enable these proposed changes. The closing date is midnight, 12 July 2019.

Archiving 2015/16 data from SUS+

26/06/2019

SUS+ supports two years plus the current year of active data for commissioning purposes. Data that is older than this is archived and will be held in SEM format and JSON format for extract by special request. The SUS+ team have not activated the archival over the last two years. We are going to re-instate this pattern starting with data for the 2015/16 financial year. This will include data for closed admitted patient care (APC), outpatient (OP) and accident & emergency (A&E). Any open admitted patient care spells with one or more episodes in the 2015/16 financial year will continue to be processed, including updates to the 2015/16 episode data.

We do not anticipate that providers will need to update 2015/16 data. However, we are giving notice that if any updates to this data are required they should be submitted to SUS by 12 July 2019. 

2015/16 data received after this data will not be included in the archived data (except for data related to open spells). 

From 2 August 2019 access to 2015/16 data will be removed from the SUS+ Portal and this data will only be available on request via the SUS+ Historical Data Request Form.

Admitted patient care data related to patients who were discharged after 31 March 2016 will continue to be available via the PbR extracts in the SUS Portal.

CDS6.2 and CDS6.2.2 (ECDS phase 2) submissions to SUS+ via MESH

13/06/2019

From 0800 this morning changes have been implemented in SUS+ to enable support of CDS Schema 6.2.2 (ECDS Phase 2) and the submission of all CDS interchange types (CDS6.2) over MESH.  Colleague organisations with the required approvals can now begin these submissions, Test and LIVE interchanges are supported both for CDS Schema 6.2.2 and CDS schema 6.2 submitted via MESH. 

The new deadline for EDT deprecation is now 31/08/2019.

NOTE:  Organisations that submit interchanges to SUS are advised to exercise care when transitioning between the EDT and the MESH channels.  Due to the independent nature of these channels within SUS there is a chance that interchanges could be processed out of order if interchanges for a provider are sent over both.  It is recommended that interchanges that have been submitted via EDT for a given provider, should complete before interchanges for the same provider are submitted via MESH.  Interchanges for a given provider should not be interleaved across channels.

Weekly SUS+ release

15/04/2019

The weekly SUS+ release on Thursday 11/04/2019 at 6pm, included the implementation of the latest ECDS SNOMED validation table, SNOMED translation table and the change to the Patient Group processing.

Weekly SUS+ release

15/03/2019

The weekly SUS+ release that went in last night 14/03/2019 at 6pm, did not include any changes to the SUS+ ECDS processing logic. 

Those changes will aim to be deployed as part of the next SUS+ weekly release on 27/03/2019.

2018 SUS+ User Satisfaction Survey - Results

08/03/2019

The 2018 SUS+ User Satisfaction Survey Results have been published.
SUS+ User Satisfaction Survey 2018 - Results

Thank you to all responders of the survey. If you have any questions, please email sm.celleight@nhs.net

Weekly SUS+ release delayed

07/03/2019

Due to unforeseen circumstances, last night's scheduled SUS+ release (06/03/2019) has been postponed until the evening of Wednesday 13 March 2019.

We apologise for the inconvenience. 

Weekly SUS+ release delayed

07/03/2019

Due to unforeseen circumstances, last night's scheduled SUS+ release (06/03/2019) has been postponed.

We will update this web page when a new release deployment date is confirmed.

We apologise for the inconvenience. 

Implementation of ECDS changes in SUS+

05/03/2019

From the evening of Wednesday 06 March 2019, SUS+ will be updated to reflect changes identified in the most recent version of the ECDS TRUD.  This includes the implementation of changes to the translation of ECDS codes to the CDS 010 Patient Group and the implementation of the new translation table documented in the TRUD.

By design these changes are not date bound within SUS+ and so will impact all ECDS records in the data store.  Users wishing to update previously downloaded data with the new derivations can do so by extracting the ECDS data from SUS+ on or after Thursday 07 March 2019.  All ECDS data extracted on or after that date will reflect the revised translation table and processing logic. 

***Note:  Providers do not need to re-submit data in order to have the new values reflected in SUS

The SUS team will liaise directly with DSCROs and other ALBs who are receiving weekly feeds of ECDS data to arrange for the generation of new baselines to reflect the changes to the processing logic.

There is a SUS+ User Show and Tell on Wednesday 06 March 2019 where the team will respond to questions.  If you have not had an invite to that please contact the team mailbox at sus@nhs.net and we will add you to the invite list.

Validation of UBRN and Patient Pathway Identifier (PPID) in SUS+

05/03/2019

Please note that the validation of submitted UBRN and PPID values by SUS+ is dependent on an unautomated feed of weekly of data from the eRS system.  This can result in some records being marked as having a invalid identifiers as a result of the time lag between the two systems.

Notice of EDT deprecation re-published

01/02/2019

Please note that after 30 May 2019 the use of the Electronic Data Transfer (EDT) file transfer mechanism will no longer be supported by the SUS+ service.  After 30 May 2019 only the Message Exchange for Social Care and Health (MESH) mechanism will be supported by the SUS service for the transfer of CDS interchange data.

EDT is a legacy transfer mechanism that was used to transfer CDS Interchanges in the SUS system. The decision was taken to continue support for EDT in the replacement SUS+ system.  This reduced the level of change that the NHS had to accommodate during the transition to SUS+ thereby reducing the level of risk to that project.

EDT is not, however, a strategic product and is not fully supported. It therefore represents a risk to the SUS+ service.

MESH is the fully supported strategic mechanism for transmitting data between NHS organisations. It is therefore important that the transfer of vital CDS interchange data be moved to the MESH protocol. 

The SUS+ system has now been amended to support the receipt of all SUS+ CDS types using the MESH transport mechanism. This includes both test and live interchanges. Organisations that transmit CDS data to SUS+ now have eight months to move their transmissions to MESH.

News Archive

Please report any service issues to the NHS Digital National Service Desk (NSD) via the NSD weblog tool (log in required), or call 0300 303 5035.

Find important SUS service announcements, information on planned outages and known issues.

The latest weekly trust reports are available on the Operational Support page.