PDS Overview

• Overview of the PDS

• What is it Replacing?

• The relationship of PDS & C&B

• Data Quality Issues

• Contacts

PDS Overview

• Authoritative source of demographics, using NHS number as the key

• Underpins all new national and local services• Local Systems (MPI’s) regarded as temporary

local caches• There was no history loaded into PDS from

previous systems, so data starts as of June 2004

NHS NCRS High Level ArchitectureNASP

LSP

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CaB PDS PSIS eTP

Transaction Messaging Service

What is it Replacing?• NHS Strategic Tracing Service (NSTS)

– Online and batch tracing service for identifying patients in acute trusts.

• NHS Numbers for Babies (NN4B)– Enabling babies to have an NHS number from birth, for life. Important as vital tests

and medical treatment to be administered in the first six weeks of life

• National Health Service Central Register (NHSCR)– Current register of patient registrations. Allows interchange of data between Health

Authorities

• National Health Applications and Infrastructure Services (NHAIS)– Various services, including registration, screening, payments, audit and

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NSTSNHAIS

Systems

NN4BNHSCR

PDS

GP System

Acute Trusts

Current Patient Data Flows

Planned Shutdown Dates

System Shutdown Date

NSTS December 2007

NHSCR 2008

NN4B November 2008

NHAIS Not yet planned

The relationship of PDS & C&B• PDS is the sole source of demographic data for

Choose and Book• Choose and Book is tightly coupled to PDS –

thus PDS must be available for Choose and Book to operate correctly

• Choose and Book communicates with PDS over TMS in the same way as local systems

• In order to refer a patient on Choose and Book they must already exist in PDS

Continued

• Retrieved demographic data is cached in Choose and Book for one hour

• Choose and Book allows certain demographic information to be updated via the Update Person module: address, contact details, preferences and disabilities

• Updates of demographic information in Choose and Book only affects PDS. Non compliant GP systems must update manually

• Demographic information from PDS is supplemented with organisational information from Spine Directory Service (SDS)

Data Quality Issues

• Incomplete Demographics information for babies• Incorrectly formatted patient address• Demographic information appears in UPPERCASE• Patient names are incorrect

Demographics information for babies• Just over 27% of births are submitted to the NHS Numbers for

Babies (NN4B) Central Issue System (CIS) using the Interim NHS Numbering System (INNS).

• INNS provides NHS Numbers at birth for those maternity units that do not have an NN4B-compliant maternity system.

• However, in some cases, it MAY mean that some of the baby's demographic details are incomplete - such as full details of the address (e.g. postcode etc.).

• NN4B will start to be phased out from mid-2007.To maintain business continuity until new LSP systems are provided, NHS Trusts MUST continue to use their existing Maternity Systems and Child Health Systems to connect to the current NN4B Service.

Incorrectly formatted patient address

• Current format is 5 unstructured lines, supported by Gazetteer

• Move to structured addresses in release 2007-A• Suppliers working to mitigate the issue until then• Issue complicated by number of data items (70 million +)

Demographic information appears in UPPERCASE

• Majority of demographic information provided when patient registers with GP.

• Details entered onto NHAIS (Exeter), which only supports uppercase text

• NHAIS transmits the data onto NHS CRS • Behaviour is stopped as systems become compliant

Patient names are incorrect

• Some records have "Mark D David" rather than "Mark David". 

• Known error on NSTS• Error will stop when PDS takes over from NSTS in 2007• IQAP working to clean up data

Contacts

• NWW website: http://nww.connectingforhealth.nhs.uk/demographics

• Demographics mailbox: Demographics@cfh.nhs.uk