Summary

Description

GP Practice data is a collection of practice level data and is designed to improve healthcare and support patients in making better, informed choices about the practice they choose to register with. The aim of the Government’s transparency agenda, announced by the Prime Minister in July 2011, is to bring together into the public domain a range of data held by government department’s on the performance of public services to the communities they serve. Within the NHS, GP practices are usually the main or first port of call for patients seeking health care advice or treatment. Not only are they the ‘gate-keepers’ to other more specialist healthcare providers but deliver themselves the majority of patient contact within the NHS. They are therefore central to both the patient, their family and to the NHS as a whole. The performance of a practice in delivering services and care to their registered patient can be a key determinant in the health outcome for the patient as well as the effectiveness of the NHS for that community. By bringing together into one place clinical service and outcome data held centrally on each GP practice in England that data can be considered, linked and analysed in ways that will better inform the delivery of care and services to patients and local communities. It will allow patients, academics, data intermediaries and other organisations to access the data so that relationships can be determined and comparisons can be made that can enable more informed choices to be made.