A vast amount of data is recorded when caring for patients in our services. Having accurate, relevant information that is accessible at the appropriate times is essential to each and every health management or business decision and to the success of the service provided. With this in mind, it is essential that all employees of BrisDoc recognise the importance of data quality and their responsibilities in this area.
- Data quality is everyone’s responsibility and can negatively impact patient care and the finances of BrisDoc.
- Errors in data shall be corrected at source, normally by the staff responsible for the original data entry.
- Information Asset Owners must ensure a System Specific Information Policy is in place for their electronic system.
- The NHS number is the only way of identifying patients across systems, and BrisDoc is committed to using this in all patient systems where it is available.
- The Data Protection Act requires that “personal data shall be accurate and, where necessary, kept up to date.
- From 25 May 2018 the Data Protection Legislation in the UK incorporates the EU General Data Protection Regulations. As well as outlining 6 principles of data protection, the new legislation contains a new principle of accountability for data controllers and processors and introduces new rights for data subjects, one of which is the right to have incorrect personal data amended.
- Quality information will help reduce unnecessary Subject Rights Requests to alter incorrect personal data
Data Standards
The standards for good data quality are reflected in the criteria below. Data needs to be:
- Complete (in terms of having been captured in full)
- Accurate (the proximity of the data to the exact or true values)
- Relevant (the degree to which the data meets current and potential user’s needs)
- Accessible (data must be retrievable in order to be used and in order to assess its quality)
- Timely (recorded and available as soon after the event as possible)
- Valid (within an agreed format which conforms to recognised standards)
- Defined (understood by all staff who need to know and reflected in procedural documents)
- Appropriately sought (in terms of being collected or checked with the patient during a period of care)
- Appropriately recorded (in both paper and electronic records)
- Processed in accordance with any existing data sharing agreement or data processing agreement
The use of data standards within systems can greatly improve data quality. These can be incorporated into systems either using electronic validation programmes which are conformant with NHS standards, e.g. drop down menus, or manually generated lists for services that do not yet have computer facilities. Either method requires the list to be generated from nationally or locally agreed standards and definitions, e.g. for GP practice codes, ethnicity, etc. These must be controlled, maintained and updated in accordance with any changes that may occur, and in addition electronic validation programmes must not be switched off or overridden by operational staff.