The NHS Information Centre's products and services

Commissioning

Products and services support local commissioners:

• Assess local health and care needs
• Design local specifications to meet that need
• Procure services to deliver that need
• Proactively monitor services and level of patient care.

Public health and key indicators

• National statistics on alcohol, drugs, smoking, obesity and health inequalities
• Support area based assessments with robust data from a range of sources including Compendium of Public Health Indicators (NCHOD)
• National Health Survey for England
• Online GP Quality Outcomes Framework (QOF) database
• NHS Central Register of all NHS patient details
• Hospital Episode Statistics.

Managing finance and performance

• Access to NHS SHA, PCT, provider and practice level comparators and indicators via NHS Comparators
• SUS PbR Online Reporting
• SUS Data Quality Dashboards
• Hospital admission and outpatient information
• Healthcare Resource Groups to support Payment by Results policy.

Clinical

• Indicators for Quality Improvement - a menu of assured quality indicators
• National Clinical audits in many areas including heart disease, diabetes, cancer and kidney care
• Secondary Uses Service (SUS) / Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) to inform healthcare planning, support clinical audits, performance monitoring and research
• Support and advice to Primary Care Trusts on managing the primary care drugs bill
• Medical Research Information Service to provide health information to support medical researchers.

Social care

• Information that reveals how adult social care is delivered across the country, including details of adults going through the community care assessment process, and the services they receive
• Development of a National Social Care Intelligence Service (NASCIS), an online one-stop-shop for social care information, which will allow users to benchmark and analyse trends against other organisations, and over time
• Support to the Commission for Social Care Inspection's star rating for social services by collecting information for the performance assessment framework and producing council profiles.

For more information please go to The NHS Information Centre's website.