General Practice (GP) Appointments Data

The GP Appointments Data (GPAD) collection was started to collect information regarding appointments in general practice, now delivered through Primary Care Networks (PCNs). It is acknowledged that NHS services come under significant additional pressure across winter and other holiday periods and whilst there are regular flows of data regarding secondary care, the understanding of capacity and utilisation of primary care services is limited. 

Therefore, in support of this and other objectives originally set out in the Five Year Forward View (and more recently in the NHS Long Term Plan), NHS England has been directed by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, on behalf of the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), to collect this transactional level dataset. 

The original GPAD collection was replaced in 2020 following the GPAD project work that NHS Digital undertook in 2017-18 and 2018-19. This project established that a further phase of work was required to introduce greater standardisation of appointment data in order to support national analysis of any developed general practice access or waiting time standard and / or capacity and utilisation metrics. This was and continues to be required to support the NHS Long Term Plan and the commitment to improving access.

More recently, additional data is being collected in relation to the reporting of exceptions by general practices where they are unable to ensure that urgent appointments are seen within 2 weeks. This functionality only appears when booking an urgent appointment more than 2 weeks in advance. The new data around exception reporting will be used:

• to monitor and review performance against the Primary Care Recovery Access Plan which requests that general practices ensure all urgent appointments are seen within 2 weeks
• to provide additional context to an Investment and Impact Fund (IIF) scheme payment indicator to ensure general practices are not penalised when an urgent appointment type is booked more than 2 weeks in advance
• by patients, general practices, Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) and nationally to monitor compliance with the patient access standard

Furthermore, PCNs are now able to support general practices by carrying out appointments on their behalf. This activity is being included within the GPAD collection by capturing appointments stored in PCN appointment books. This PCN data will be used to:

• give a more complete view of activity taking place in primary care to ensure all practice activity is being fairly reflected
• measure manifesto commitments such as the commitment to create 50 million more appointments in GP surgeries per year
• measure the impact the Additional Roles and Reimbursement Scheme (ARRS) has had on primary care activity

Primary Care Access and Digital Analytics at NHS England.

• Be informed
  
• Get access to it
  
• Rectify or change it
  
• Erase or remove it
  
• Restrict or stop processing it
  
• Move, copy or transfer it
  
• Object to it being processed or used
  
• Know if a decision was made by a computer rather than a person
  

Consent not the basis for processing

NHS England’s lawful basis for processing (collecting and analysing) personal data is:

• UK GDPR Article 6(1)(c) - processing is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which the controller is subject

NHS England has the legal permission to collect the data under Section 254 of the Health and Social Care Act 2012.  

NHS England's lawful basis for processing (collecting and analysing) special categories of personal data is:

• UK GDPR Article 9(2)(g) - reasons of substantial public interests, supplemented by:
  - Data Protection Act 2018 Schedule 1, Part 2, Paragraph 6 - 'statutory etc and government purposes'.