Independent Healthcare Provider Workforce Statistics, September 2022, Experimental

The collection of a workforce Minimum Data Set (wMDS) from all providers of NHS-funded care was established as part of the Workforce Information Architecture (WIA) review following the Health and Social Care Act 2012 reforms. The reforms presented an opportunity to improve data quality, as well as data coverage and completeness, to support a step change in the effectiveness of workforce planning. NHS England consulted with a wide range of users and stakeholders and identified the need to categorise the workforce more clearly to show where individuals are working (whether in a hospital, a GP practice, or in the independent sector).  

As part of the WIA workstream, NHS England has published biannual experimental statistics for the IHP Workforce in England since September 2015. The collection was paused twice (March 2020 and March 2021) to support healthcare providers during the COVID-19 pandemic, and again in September 2021 due to technical reasons.  This is the first release in this series by NHS England following the merger of NHS Digital, NHS England and other organisations.

There are two sources of data that make up these statistics: extractions from the Electronic Staff Record (ESR) and submissions via the workforce Minimum Data Set Collection Vehicle (wMDSCV).

The information provided for the IHP Workforce does not represent the entire workforce employed across the whole of this sector and does not only show the staff providing NHS commissioned services.

The number of IHP organisations providing data and how they have provided data has changed over time, from 41 in 2015 to 68 for this collection. For further details please see Appendix 1 in the Tables file.

Data has been published at individual organisation level from March 2019 data. Organisations using ESR have always been identified against their data, however, from this release forwards, organisations who submit via the wMDSCV are also identified alongside their data.

Since the September 2019 release, organisations contributing data via the wMDSCV agreed to be listed in this publication (please see Appendix 3 in the Tables file).

It is hoped that the move towards a greater focus on individual organisations will further help to increase the accuracy for the data as those organisations are better able to understand the wider context of the data they have provided.