DAPB0090: Health and Social Care Organisation Reference Data

This information standard provides reference data about the Organisations that comprise the health and social care services, including non-direct-care Organisations, primarily in England but also in the other UK-constituent countries. The data is distributed and uploaded to health IT systems. It supports user security, access control, messaging and is used as reference data for both operations and reporting.

This information standard is published under Section 250 of the Health and Social Care Act 2012. An Information Standards Notice (see below) provides an overview of scope and implementation timescales.

Version 1.1

Version 1.0

January 2021: The NHS Business Services Authority (NHS BSA) has recently introduced a 7 character code for all new dental practices. As this reference data is published by the ODS, a decision has been taken to adopt the same 7 character code format for all new dental practices from February 2021. The majority of practices that are already coded as 6 characters will remain the same;  however a small number of practices will need to migrate over to the new 7 character code. A test file containing the new dental practice codes is now available from the data downloads page.  

October 2020:  Following a pause, the new ANANA code format has now formally come into use for all new code requests. New code requests will be given an ANANA code with a structure of 5 alternating alphabetic and numeric characters e.g. G7H8J. This means it will no longer be possible to identify the type of organisation from the way it is structured. Detailed guidance on this change is available on the ODS website.