Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 24 October to Question 183290 on Rehabilitation, when the review of community performance reporting was commissioned; who is undertaking that review; and what the (a) terms of reference and (b) time frame are for that review.

There was no national data collection of the activity and outcomes of healthcare that takes place out of hospital, and so it was agreed via the National Information Board (NIB) and NHS England’s Data Co-ordination Group in 2016 to develop a community services dataset, which has had two distinct phases.

The process that has been followed by NHS England is as follows.

In the first phase, now completed, the Community Services Data Set (CSDS) was developed by removing the age cap from the Children and Young People’s Health Services dataset and has been collecting data since November 2017. NHS England continues to work with NHS Digital to encourage community service providers to complete their statutory obligations to submit data to improve the knowledge and information we have available nationally on services delivered locally.

The CSDS will be further enhanced with a phase two development that will broaden the scope including outcome measures, and work is scheduled to begin on the scope shortly with plans to deliver in the autumn of 2020. Further work is also ongoing in NHS Digital to establish connectivity across national data sets to give longitudinal intelligence to support future planning processes.