General Practice Workforce, 28 February 2023

From this release, the way missing data is denoted in the detailed practice-level CSV has changed.

In previous releases, where a practice had provided no data at all to the National Workforce Reporting Service (NWRS) for a staff group, ‘0’ was presented in headcount and full-time equivalent (FTE) fields for all job roles within that staff group. Where a practice had provided data which had not passed validation or where all records submitted were for staff who had left or not yet joined, ‘ND’ was presented.

From this release, ‘NA’ (for not available) is presented for all types of ‘no data’. The staff group Data Source fields (columns AB-AE) still indicate which of the two types of no data applies to each practice for each staff group. 

There are additional differences for the Direct Patient Care (DPC) and GP staff groups that users should be aware of.

DPC staff group

For this group, our estimation methodology is different to the other three groups, based on the assumption that it is possible a practice may be operating without DPC staff. Our methodology therefore only estimates for DPC staff at a practice if they have also failed to provide valid data for at least one other staff group. From this release, ‘NA’ is only displayed for practices that fall into this category. For practices which have provided no valid DPC records but do have staff in all of the other three staff groups, ‘0’ is presented, as it is our assumption that this practice does not employ DPC staff.

GP staff group

For the GP staff group, a small number of practices do not provide any GP records in NWRS, but do have GP in training grade records in the Trainee Information System (TIS), which is the data source for GPs in training grade. Previously, for practices with no NWRS GP records, the Total GP (and total male/female GP) FTE/headcount was the sum of the GPs in training grade FTE/headcount, while for those with ‘no valid or current data’, ‘ND’ was presented.

From this release, the Total GP (and total male/female GP) headcount and FTE cells show ‘NA’ for both types of no data. This means that for these practices, the GPs in training grade are no longer reflected in the Total GP figures, but we believe this is appropriate since the total GP number is genuinely not available. Users should bear this change in mind when making comparisons between files from this release onwards with those from previous releases. 

These changes mean that, wherever ‘NA’ is presented, this indicates that for the applicable job roles, these practices will form part of the Sub-ICB Location level estimates for their area wherever estimates are included in our published figures. Please note that the practice-level CSVs do not include these estimates.

Formatting changes have been introduced to the accompanying Excel bulletin tables file for this release, to ensure it is accessible for screen reading technology. Among the changes is the removal of footnotes from below each table. Footnotes have been consolidated and now appear on the Notes sheet. 

Further information

If you have any comments or questions about these changes, please contact NHS England on 0300 303 5678 or email Primary[email protected].