Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department has taken to ensure the accuracy of the workforce minimum data set data.

The Workforce Information Architecture programme was established in 2011 by the Department as part of the Health and Social Care reforms to review, improve and test the arrangements for handling workforce data and intelligence that will be necessary for the reformed systems to operate effectively. The review recommended that a workforce Minimum Data Set (wMDS) be collected by NHS Digital from all providers of National Health Service-funded care. The reforms also presented an opportunity to improve data quality, as well as data coverage and completeness, to support a step change in the effectiveness of workforce planning.

Healthcare workforce statistics in England are compiled from data supplied by around 500 NHS organisations and some independent healthcare providers.

To comply with its responsibilities regarding national workforce data quality, NHS Digital ensures that it undertakes rigorous data quality checking of the data submitted to it, or extracted from different systems to produce the wMDS. Additionally, NHS Digital liaises with these 500 organisations and their agents to encourage complete data submission, and to minimise inaccuracies and the effect of missing and invalid data.

Whilst NHS Digital seeks to minimise inaccuracies and the effect of missing and invalid data the responsibility for data accuracy lies with the organisations providing the data. Methods are continually being updated to improve data quality.