Data Access Request Service (DARS) guidance

Slide 1 – General Practice Workforce Data Set Webinar (Title Page)

Welcome to this webinar on the General Practice Workforce data set.

My name is Kate Parkyn and I'm a Senior Information Analyst at NHS Digital.

I will be taking you through information on our available DARS product.

Please view this webinar before making your DARS application.

Slide 2 - General Practice Workforce Data Set – Overview

The General Practice Workforce data set is made up of record level data, from a quarterly collection about the General Practice Workforce, in what are considered traditional high street General Practices.

This Workforce includes GP’s, Nurses, Direct Patient Care staff filling other clinical roles and Administrative staff.

The data set includes information about the individual themselves, where they are working and the work they are doing.  

It includes staff providing services specifically for what is defined as a traditional General Practice, these are only for what the typically thought of as a high street family doctor surgery.

The data set doesn't currently include primary care staff providing services at other locations, such as educational establishments or specialist care centres. Also not all doctors with the General Practice specialty are recorded in this data, and some are instead included in NHS Workforce statistics and the independent health care provider Workforce statistics.

Replacing another earlier collection, the current record level data collection began in September 2015 using the primary care web tool, the PCWT, and 4 Health Education England region's own tools.
GP Registrar data came from a combination of these and the electronic staff record system. However since June 2018, this has come solely from Health Education England's Trainee Information System, known as TIS.

By early 2019, all PCWT and HEE tool users had been migrated to the National Workforce Reporting system, the NWRS.

The General Practice Workforce data is extracted quarterly in March, June, September and December from the NWRS and TIS and is not refreshed.
It is published quarterly as part of the General Practice Workforce series.

Please look at the publication before making a DARS application as we may already have produced the information you're interested in.  

Slide 3 – Data Quality

Before requesting data, we recommend viewing the Data Quality statements that form part of our quarterly publications.

This will give an indication of the coverage and validity of tables and fields you may want to access.

Data completion is improving, and estimations are made for Practices providing no records, and for any records submitted with their hours missing.

The process for this is detailed in the publication data quality statements.

There has also been work done to improve the collection of GP locum data and since December 2017, additional data has been collected in NWRS in the Infrequent Locums module.

Work is ongoing to increase submissions and improve quality and recent data will likely be more complete than that extracted previously.

Slide 4 – General Practice Workforce Data Set – product available through DARS

This data set may be useful to you if you have an interest in Workforce Planning or the changing nature of the Workforce.

The product will be provided in a flat table format and you'll be able to specify your desired fields in your application.

The data will be available from September 2015 to the most recent published quarter.

Slide 5 – General Practice Workforce Data Set – product available through DARS (continued)

Some fields in the data set contain unique data items which support data linkage, including GP’s registration numbers and Practice codes.

Linkage between the General Practice Workforce and other data sets can be discussed during the application process.

Data were initially extracted twice yearly from September 2015. This changed to quarterly for GP’s in September 2016 and for Nurses, Direct Patient Care and Administrative staff in September 2017.

Each quarterly data set contains the Workforce data as at the specific extraction date.
We publish the data around six weeks after this date, at which point it will become available through DARS.

When presenting or disseminating any General Practice Workforce data, we ask that you follow any direction provided by us to prevent the disclosure of identities or personal data.

Specific suppression rules, or limits on the data we provide, will be discussed as part of considering each application.

Slide 6 – Further reading and useful links

This slide contains useful further information on DARS, the General Practice Workforce data set and the National Workforce reporting system.

Please feel free to have a read at your leisure.