Monthly Improving Access to Psychological Therapies Data Quality Reports - Final February and provisional March 2014

The Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) data set is a regular return of data generated by providers of NHS-commissioned IAPT services in England (including services provided by independent organisations). It was mandated as a monthly return from 1 April 2012 and collects details of all people accessing these services. Submissions are received by the Health and Social Care Information Centre as record-level anonymised data from patient-administration systems.

This publication comprises national- and provider-level data quality measures of some key data items in the IAPT data set: postcode; birthdate; gender; ethnicity; general medical practice code; NHS number; religious belief; sexual orientation; presence of a long-term physical health condition; provisional diagnosis; source of referral; Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ 9) score; Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD) score; Work and Social Adjustment Scale score; appointment type; therapy type; disability. These measures are provided as both counts and percentages of all eligible IAPT records and will be of interest to stakeholders (e.g. the Department of Health and service commissioners), data providers and users of our statistics (e.g. mental health organisations including charities, and service users and their representatives).

Note that amendments to the construction of some data quality measures, agreed with the Department of Health, have been implemented in this release. These revisions affect the following measures: DQM26 Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ 9) Score; DQM27 Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD 7) Score; DQM28 Work and Social Adjustment Scale Score; DQM29 Appointment Type; DQM30 Therapy type.

The rules for the Data Quality Measures can be found in the Related links section of this publication, and any revisions will be documented.

General Notes

The Health and Social Care Information Centre does not presently have permission to hold person-identifiable data. It is therefore only been possible to validate person-identifiable data items such as NHS number, Postcode and Date of Birth by using data items which have been derived from these items (as specified in the validation rules).

This monthly file also contains activity data detailing the number of referrals received, entering treatment and completing treatment in the month, by CCG of GP Practice for February.

An amendment to the processing of monthly submissions has been implemented.  This will make a slight difference to some activity measures.  Although the impact is minimal January activity measures will be reissued at when the Quarter 4 reports are published, to ensure consistency.