Participation methodology

We have introduced a weekly participation process to the Online Consultation / Video Consultation (OC/VC) collection to ensure that we receive data only from practices that have agreed to share their OCVC data with us. 

As GP practices are the data controllers of this data, we issued a Direction and a Data Provision Notice to inform practices of their obligation to take part in this collection and invited practices to participate via CQRS (calculating quality reporting service). Practices can sign up at any point. NHS England will take an extract of this list of practices on a weekly basis and use it to validate the data we are allowed to receive at practice level. 

The list contains all GP practices that have an 'approved' status on CQRS for the given point in time. 

Practices that will be excluded are:

• practices that have been offered but not actively accepted
• practices that have rejected 
• practices not on CQRS

Once a practice signs up, it means that they have approved for NHS ENGLAND to have access to all their data on OCVC including historic data. 

The participation list is named ocvc_gp_partcipation_suppliercode_date with a  txt.ctl / txt.dat format. This file will be shared with suppliers on a weekly basis through Message Exchange for Social care and Health (MESH) inbox of all suppliers. As it is peculiar to MESH, this will be in supplier inbox for 5 days after which it will be deleted automatically. We encourage suppliers to download and use this file as soon as it is delivered.

The participation list will be shared weekly on a Monday morning. We would encourage suppliers not to send in data until they have received the participation list for the corresponding reporting period. In cases where there is a bank holiday on the Monday, the list will be sent out the following working day. 

It is expected that suppliers should apply this list to their data before sending to NHS England. If you do not apply the list and send data for practices who have not accepted the DPN this data will be rejected from your submission.

If data is sent for a practice that is not on the participation list, the records for just that practice will be rejected and identified via the submission report sent to suppliers. 

In very rare cases, practice who have been an 'Approved' status on CQRS will be rejected if they sign up AFTER we have withdrawn the list from CQRS for that reporting period.

For example the participation list is retrieved from CQRS on a Friday by close of business, if a practice logs into CQRS and makes any updates between Friday close of business and Monday morning when the list is sent, it wont be updated until the next reporting period. This will be updated in the list sent for the following week (reporting period). 

A warning will be sent via the error reports for practices that are on CQRS but not 'LIVE' in the reference tables. 

For issues about signing up or a break in the pipeline contact us through the National Servicedesk.