Health Care Data (UK0056)

• Trust, Privacy, and Openness in UK Health Reform (May 29, 2019)

The English healthcare system is already one of the most transparent in the world – publishing more information than any other country. It is now taking further steps to transform access to data for patients, doctors, researchers, and academics. This ambition is central to NHS England’s strategy of delivering high quality care for all by improving the quality, efficiency and equity of health services. Greater transparency will empower patients and citizens to hold the health service to account and at the same time support life sciences research so that more life saving treatments can be found.
The key milestones for this commitment are:
-overarching clinical indicators – for ten new clinical areas (including cancer, children’s services, mental health and stroke), data will be made available to tell the public how well services are performing and meeting their needs; the first of these will be available by Summer 2014 with more available over the following 12 months. Once it is available, we will be able to use the care.data information service outlined above to support the development of this information
-more clinician level data – building on the successful publication of surgeon level data from national clinical audits across ten specialties earlier this year, NHS England will extend the programme to new treatments and conditions (throughout 2014)
-General Practice information – new information about the quality of care provided by GP practice and associated health outcomes will be made available both as open data and also through public facing channels such as NHS Choices (Winter 2013)
-social care transparency – information about care services for around 10,000 care homes collected by the NHS Choices website will be made available as open data in the Summer of 2014
-extending the Friends and Family test – the successful Friends and Family Test programme that asks patients whether they would recommend the hospital services they used to friends or family members will be extended to cover GP practices, community and mental health services in December 2014 and all other NHS services by the end of March 2015
-patients in control – newly developed Patient Centred Outcome Measurement (PCOM) tools will provide new insights into how well services for people with 20 different rare and complex conditions are meeting the needs of their patients. These measures will expand the evidence base for the effectiveness of treatments, therapies and interventions and help improve the quality of patient care. In developing the PCOM tools, NHS England will support on-line communities that will both help to develop the tools, and provide mutually beneficial help, advice and support to one another
-better open data – to help people to locate and use data about health more easily NHS England, with the Health and Social Care Information Centre, will comprehensively review the way that data is made available through data.gov.uk. This will ensure that health information is easy to find and tagged. We will also increase the availability and accessibility of key reference data which is available as open data including geographical information (Summer 2014)
-by June 2014, clinical data from GP practices will be linked to data from all hospitals providing NHS funded care through the care.data initiative outlined above. This will allow us to develop and publish new insights into the quality of services and to better understand the way that services interact, an issue that we know is important for patients
We have an ambitious programme of work to support patients to take greater control of their own health and wellbeing. This will be supported by their General Practice which will offer a range of digital services. Our ambition is that by March 2015 everyone who wishes to will be able to:
-order repeat prescriptions and book appointments online
-view their own GP record, including test results, online
-have secure electronic communication with their practice
Alongside this, we are working with leading practices across the country to support development and evaluation of longer term ambitions, including the use of e-consultations and more interactive records access, ahead of wider adoption.