National Framework Agreement for the Provision of Data Validation Services

The Contracting Authority has set up a national framework agreement that will enable NHS Organisations to access highly specialised support to enable the testing and validation of patient data, as part of the process of migrating from a legacy PAS to a modern EPR system. A number of NHS organisations are currently migrating, or are expected to migrate from a legacy Patient Administration System (PAS) to modern Electronic Patient Record (EPR) systems.

Many legacy PAS are not Referral to Treatment (RTT) compliant and, therefore, RTT Pathways and associated Events for migration have to be manually manufactured from existing referrals and outcomes. There may also be significant data quality issues with legacy data that will impact on the management and integrity of that data prior to implementation of a new EPR system.

NHS organisations may lack in-house expertise and/or capacity to undertake the necessary data cleansing exercises and may require expert assistance in undertaking a data validation exercise prior to the Client’s planned migration of its legacy PAS to a modern EPR system. The objective of this framework is to provide NHS Organisations (“the Clients”) with expert assistance in undertaking data validation exercises prior to and following a Client’s planned migration of its PAS to a modern EPR system.

This includes the validation of incomplete pathways, incomplete waiting lists and duplicated pathways as well as understanding the data quality issues that could facilitate the RTT migration to the EPR system and the Client’s Covid-19 restoration and recovery work. This will enable the NHS Organisations to: • provide assurance to the Board, CCGs and patients of the accuracy of the patient data held, and particularly how this is managed in relation to supporting RTT and other associated patient access standards, • improve the quality of patient data held within the EPR and support the optimal use of the EPR from implementation. The Supplier will ensure that effective knowledge transfer takes place and will help the Client to develop an in-house central validation and booking team to achieve business as usual booking and reporting post the EPR implementation.