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The Department of Health and Social Care is seeking to support policymakers by extracting patient data related to those who receive NHS-funded social care.

Newly published procurement information reveals that the department has signed a contract with CHS Healthcare, a specialist firm that provides systems and support in areas of the health sector such as care management and hospital discharge. 

The DHSC was seeking a supplier of systems related to “continuing healthcare” – which is the term applied to social-care services delivered by the NHS, rather than local authorities. Such care is available to those with “needs arising from disability, accident or illness that cannot be met by existing universal or specialist services alone”.

Later in 2022, a larger project will require all system suppliers to provide complete sets of “patient-level data” to NHS England.

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The CHS Healthcare engagement – which is being run by government directly, rather than the NHS – is a smaller, more targeted collation of information, encompassing a “small sub-set of data fields” for the specific purposes of supporting the work of policymakers focused on the area of continuing healthcare.

“The DHSC is looking to improve its evidence base for policy-development purposes and, to do this, are [seeking] a new data extraction from one system supplier which has CCG (clinical commissioning group) coverage at least 60%,” according to commercial documents.”

The contract came into effect today and will run for the next four months, during which time it is expected to include a total of 60 days’ work. The deal, which will be worth at least £22,000 to the supplier, could then be extended for a further term of six months.