Maternity Services Data Set (MSDS) data quality submission summary tool

This tool is designed to improve readability and understanding of the MSDS validation reports that are provided after a submission on the SDCS Cloud portal.

Further information on these reports is available in the SDCS Cloud Data Quality Guide, which can be found at Strategic Data Collection Service in the cloud (SDCS Cloud). This guide also contains the MSDS parent and child table relationships which will help in navigating any group-level rejections.

• upon opening the tool please make sure you enable content if prompted
• insert your MSDS data validation report onto the ErrorCSV tab. Switch to the main tab and click the create error list button
• clicking the Create error list button will not only run the tool but create a timestamp on the Log tab which can be used to evidence use of the tool
• use the drop-down menu to select a particular measure or to view a full summary of your validation errors
• the tool will be regularly updated to include further measures and to guarantee consistent functionality; please check you have the latest version of the tool before use

This tool provides a summary count of validation errors in order to quickly show common data quality issues.

Where these data quality issues may impact upon the various metrics being measured as part of the Clinical Negligence Scheme for Trusts (CNST).

It will not flag any record level data issues beyond those defined in the technical specification. The dataset validations are not specific to any metric so if, for example, a specific age is required for a target metric the tool will only highlight if the age is in the incorrect format, not that the age is correct for that target metric. 

As the tool is reading validations in an initial submission it will not highlight data quality issues in any derived fields that are used in these measures.

The full construction for each of the metrics being measured as part of CNST year 4 is available in the metadata file. This is made available with the Maternity Services Monthly statistics publication each month under the resources’ heading.