Quarry House
Quarry Hill
LEEDS
West Yorkshire
LS2 7UE
Executive Assistant (Temp):
Direct Dial: 011382 50633
To: CCG Clinical Leads
Cc: CCG Accountable Officers / 5 December 2013
DearColleague
Re: Letter to CCGs re accurate provider list for IAPT services
The publication of the refreshed Mandate has reaffirmed the importance of improving mental health services and giving mental health the same priority as physical health. A key step will be to deliver the ambition to improve access to psychological therapies. NHS England is seeking to support Clinical Commissioning Groups with this ambition. Key to this will be having good provider data to inform CCGs that their commissioning intentions are being delivered.
As you will know, from the accompanying announcement in the CCG Bulletin, NHS England is publishing an IAPT interactive atlas to help commissioners understand their achievement, progress and data quality for the 2 key NHS mandate commitments on Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) access and recovery rates.
However, although I’m sure this tool is welcome you may be aware that there are on-going data quality concerns. Some commissioners are shown to have incomplete data and/or activity below planned levels of achievement and this can only be improved by making sure all providers are submitting the right returns. The Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) are working with individual providers to improve the completeness and accuracy of submissions. We are asking CCGs to help us in our work with the HSCIC by undertaking three interrelated tasks on a one-off basis:
- CCGs to assure themselves that all their providers of IAPT services are submitting data to the HSCIC through the IAPT minimum dataset.
- Confirm the full list of IAPT service providers contracted by individual CCGs along with appropriate contact details.
- Provide supplementary detail as necessary e.g. where it is known that providers submit data on behalf of other providers.
The above actions will mean the HSCIC can comprehensively support providers in making timely and accurate data submissions but also allow the relevant entry on NHS Choices to be as up to date as possible. Once a fully accurate list of providers is available, NHS England has agreed with HSCIC that they will take a more proactive role in reviewing submissions providing individual feedback to providers thereby assuring data compliance and maintaining an accurate list of providers. This information can then be shared with NHS Choices thereby not only assisting in assuring that all activity data is captured but that there is good quality information in the public domain via NHS Choices to facilitate patient access.
Attached is an Excel spreadsheet which identifies all providers that submitted completed episodes in Q4 12/13.I would be grateful if you would check the list of IAPT service providers that have submitted data for your CCG[1], add missing providers with their provider ODS code, and add contact details for all providers. Please forward the completed spreadsheet to . As we are asking for additional detail for each of your providers, I would be grateful for a response from every CCG, or as appropriate from a CSU on your behalf. The deadline for responses is 31st December 2013 which will enable us to continue to improve data quality for the financial year end and to inform the 14/15 planning round.
In summary, the purpose of this request is to make sure NHS England and the HSCIC supportCCGs in getting accurate and timely information about the services they commission and that clinicians and patients are able to see the full offer available to them.
Once received NHS England will liaise with HSCIC to establish an accurate list of providers reconciled to CCGs and also establish a routine for sharing this information with NHS Choices plus providing suitable feedback on data submissions to local CCGs.
Yours faithfully
Dr Martin McShane
Director (Domain 2) Improving the quality of life for people with Long Term Conditions
[1] IAPT MDS is a mandated data set and has full ROCR approvalROCR/OR/2155/003MAND