Read about the service provided by the Data Services for Commissioners programme which enables the intelligent commissioning of £90billion of health and social care services across England, with the minimal safe and efficient use of personal confidential data, in line with legal requirements. Topics covered: - What are the Data Services for Commissioners? - How do these services help commissioners? - How DSfC is delivered - Processing patient information

1. What are the Data Services
for Commissioners?
Our Data Services for Commissioners (DSfC) allow
Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs), NHS
England Area Teams and Local Authority Public
Health to plan and commission healthcare services,
in their local area and nationally, using services
provided by the HSCIC.
How do these services help
commissioners?
Commissioners of healthcare services need to plan
and commission in their local area through analysis of
actual and projected use of services across all parts
of the care economy. This modelling requires access
to information about the care provided to patients,
their hospitals stays and patient journeys but without
accessing personal confidential patient data.
Care commissioners do not provide direct patient
care, and therefore they have no legal basis on which
to access personal confidential patient information.
For this reason commissioners require an intermediary
service that specialises in processing, analysing and
packaging patient information into a format they can
legally use. This intermediary service is provided by
Data Services for Commissioners (DSfC).
How DSfC is delivered
DSfC has established ten regional processing
centres, known as Data Services for Commissioners
Regional Offices (DSCROs). These offices access
appropriate information, without compromising
patient confidentiality or statutory legal requirements
around the use of this data.
Data Services for Commissioners
The service provided by the Data Services for Commissioners programme enables
the intelligent commissioning of £90billion of health and social care services across
England, with the minimal safe and efficient use of personal confidential data, in line
with legal requirements.
DSCROs perform their services with staff from
Commissioning Support Units (CSUs) who are
seconded into the DSCRO and work with data in
the regional processing centres. The staff follow
strict rules on accessing, analysing and processing
data. The powers granted to the organisation by the
Health and Social Care Act 2012 mean that staff are
operating within an approved legal framework.
Processing patient
information
Directions from NHS England allow the HSCIC
to capture local healthcare information for
commissioning purposes. The organisations that
commission healthcare are not providing direct
care and as such are restricted in what personal
confidential data they can access.
To enable intelligent commissioning of healthcare
services, the HSCIC collects, analyses and processes
healthcare data into a format which allows the
appropriate commissioners access to the relevant
data for their defined purposes. In doing this, the
DSfC programme allows commissioners access to
appropriate information, without compromising
patient confidentiality or statutory legal requirements
around the use of this data.
Find out more
Find out more about the DSfC
programme at www.hscic.gov.uk/
dataservicesforcommissioners
www.hscic.gov.uk 0845 300 6016 enquiries@hscic.gov.uk