Service availability and incident management

Business hours of operation are 8am to 6pm Monday to Friday excluding bank holidays. Although the system is usually available outside of these hours, it is occasionally taken down to perform planned maintenance.

Notification of outages

We aim to ensure that where possible outages occur outside of business hours. Any unplanned outage occurring during business hours of will be handled as a high severity incident and regular updates will be posted on the service announcements and outages webpage.

Interchange failures

Users can expect to be notified of any interchange validation failures within 3 business hours. However, at busy times, this may take longer so please allow 8 business hours before reporting any delays.  Please note that where interchanges are submitted via a third party, notifications of invalid interchanges will be sent to the third party.

Data availability

PbR Inclusion and delivery dates are published on the SUS PbR guidance. PbR processing is applied when extracts are requested. The length of time taken for extracts to run depends on the size of the extract and complexity of the database search as determined by its parameters.

If the service levels outlined above are not met, or if the system does not behave as you would expect, users are advised to raise a call with the National Service Desk.

For any service issues, please contact the National Service Desk (NSD) via:

NSD weblog tool (log in and N3 connection required) 

Or call on 0300 30 35 035

The help section of the SSD National Service Desk login webpage provides guidance on how to register with NHS Digital and how users that do not have an N3 connection can raise an incident. Any users experiencing any problems with weblog or registration process are advised to telephone the helpdesk.

Incidents are generally resolved more quickly if details of the issue are provided using the weblog tool. Users can expect a response as per the following table:

Patient confidential data

Never included patient confidential data  in either a telephone conversation or weblog call with NSD. Inclusion of such information constitutes a reportable breach of information governance rules. If it is necessary to refer to individual records to illustrate the issue, the SUS generated record ID should be used as it is not PCD.

The National Service Desk (NSD) is open from 08:30 to 17:30 Monday to Friday excluding bank holidays.  Updates regarding higher severity incidents will be published on the service management service status webpage.

When reporting an issue via telephone, by the end of the conversation users should have been told:

• The reference number allocated to the issue
• The name of the operator who logged the call
• The short description recorded for the issue
• Confirmation of user reference number if provided
• The priority (Severity Level) allocated to the issue

If it is possible to resolve the issue immediately, a summary of the resolution will be provided. If it was not possible to resolve the issue immediately users will be advised when a progress update can be expected.

Whether an incident is raised with NSD via telephone, weblog, or both; a confirmation should be received.

When a resolution has been determined, users will be contacted with the details. NSD will keep the incident open for 3 working days to allow users time to  respond if they do not think the issue has been resolved.

• no further action is required if the issue is considered to be resolved.
• if a related issue persists users should reply within three working days and the resolution will be reviewed

If NSD has not had a response after 3 working days the call will be closed. If the call is closed users must raise a new incident.