There are many DH / NHS commitments involving the clinical classifications and we provide advice based upon sharing of expertise not held by the data users.  The classifications and the support they need are implicit in national data requirements.  For example, the Admitted Patient Care Commissioning Dataset (APC CDS) which flows from healthcare provider to commissioner via the Secondary User Service and which feeds the Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) is totally reliant on the clinical coding content in order to deliver required outputs such as the clinical indicators. 

Less well known are the hundreds of requests served by HES each year with clinical data to support DH, NHS and bona fide research business including Parliamentary Queries and press enquiries.

More recently our work supports the DH Payment by Results - most notably by the development of OPCS-4 - but a less visible yet important aspect is our advisory role to the DH which includes working closely with the Audit Commission and the Data Assurance Framework.  We are providing advice and the use of our NHS-wide audit model to support the clinical coding audit. 

We also work with the Information Centre for Health and Social Care that hold responsibility for development of the Healthcare Resource Groups to ensure appropriate use, and synergy, between the classifications and the casemix system.

Future development of the classifications as NHS information standards will be driven by changing requirements particularly around the NHS Care Records Service within the wider NHS community.  Our classifications service will therefore evolve to support changing clinical and business needs.