§ Mr. ToddTo ask the Secretary of State for Health how data quality for information management purposes is managed within the NHS. [15401]
§ Ms BlearsInformation used for management purposes should be accurate, relevant and timely to inform decision making which is appropriate and based on evidence. National health service managers are responsible for ensuing that the data collected and used by their organisation are of sufficient quality to meet their needs. Ideally, data should be collected once only, and verified as close as possible to the source of the data. Most NHS information systems have in-built validation routines which can check the quality of data as they are entered on to the system.
Further data quality checks are usually made as data pass between organisations. Data used to support commissioning, for example, are exchanged via the NHS-wide Clearing Service. Within this process, data quality reports are produced and returned to the data originator. In addition, the Department's regional offices provide feedback to NHS hospital trusts on the quality of data held in the NHS-wide clearing service database. The Department also produces data quality reports on the records received as hospital episode statistics, as well as validating other centrally required returns based on aggregated information.