A series of discovery projects with the adult social care sector in England carried out in 2019/20 by the Local Government Association (LGA) and the Professional Records Standards Body (PRSB) found there were limited data standards across the adult social care sector, causing significant burden on the system.
People across the sector, including those receiving care, providers, commissioners and system suppliers all agreed that standardised terminology and Information Standard products across the adult social care system could make a big difference in reducing that burden.
Building on commitments made in People at the Heart of Care (December 2021) and Data saves lives (June 2022), a new roadmap for better data for adult social care was published for consultation. Care data matters (February 2023) sets out the Department of Health and Social Care’s plan to improve how we collect, share and analyse data in adult social care.
Improving the quality and exchange of information within the care sector and between adult social care and the NHS, including streamlining existing data collections and improving interoperability of systems, is central to this ambition.
There are 14 data and interoperability standards, for example information governance or business continuity – published in January 2023 by the Digitising Social Care (DiSC) programme and setting out the core capabilities required to support information sharing between health and adult social care through Digital Social Care Records (DSCRs)
Assured DSCR suppliers are expected to comply with this to retain their assured listing status.
DiSC is currently developing future standards on minimum datasets in collaboration with social care partners and stakeholders in order to clearly define required data fields to be recorded on a day-to-day basis. These will be published for reference by DSCR supplier and adult social care providers. For more information see the DSCR roadmap.
The new Adult Social Care Terminology Catalogue will support future development of digital care records and lists data sets, data standards, terminologies and definitions specific to adult social care to help ensure all organisations use the same language.