Sections 92-101
Summary
The provisions in Part 2 increase data sharing and promote more effective use of data across the health and social care system. Provisions include:
- amending the definition of 'information standards'
- making it easier to compare data across the health and social care system
- sharing anonymous health and social care information
- enabling the Health and Social Care Information Centre (the Information Centre) to require the collection of information from private health care providers
- enabling the secretary of state to require certain providers of adult social care services to provide certain information when requested.
Other provisions include a requirement for the Information Centre to have regard to the need to promote the effective and efficient planning, development, and delivery of health services and of adult social care in England when exercising its functions. There is a new power for regulations to enable the secretary of state to impose a financial penalty on private providers who fail to comply with an information standard. The Medicines and Medical Devices Act 2021 is amended to enable regulations providing for a medicines information system to be established and operated by the Information Centre.
Key sections
Section 95: Information standards
These provisions amend the definition of 'information standards' as set out in the 2012 Act. Information standards set standards relating to processing information, including standards about how information is shared, and which make it easier to compare data, across the publicly funded health and social care system. They are prepared and published by the secretary of state (in relation to health services and adult social care) and by NHS England in relation to NHS services. They apply to the secretary of state and NHS England as well as to bodies involved in the provision of publicly arranged health or adult social care services in England.
Section 96: Sharing anonymous health and social care information
This allows a health or social care body to require another health or social care body to provide information, other than personal information, that relates only to its activities in connection with the provision of health services or adult social care in England.
Section 98: Collection of information from private health care providers
This enables the Information Centre to require private providers of health services to provide it with any information it requires in order to comply with a direction from the secretary of state under section 254 of the 2012 Act to establish an information system.
Section 99: Collection of information from adult social care
This section enables the secretary of state to require certain providers of adult social care services to provide to the secretary of state information relating to themselves, their activities in connection with providing adult social care in England, or individuals they have provided adult social care to in England (or, where those services are commissioned by a local authority in England, outside England).