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 deliveredDSfC 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 informationDirections 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