GP Practice List Reconciliation

Practice Reconciliations are a routine NHS administrative data quality process used to ensure that a GP practice’s patient list is accurate and aligned with the Personal Demographics Service (PDS). These should be done every three years but can be done on request if there is an issue with your capitation. It is also advised to undertake one following a practice merger or system migration.

What is a GP List Reconciliation?

A GP list reconciliation is when a GP practice’s clinical system data and the PDS are compared to:

• Confirm that patients are correctly registered on the clinical system and the PDS.
• Identify possible data quality discrepancies eg: Name, Address, Date of Birth
• Highlight patients that need to be removed from or registered to a practice

It’s essentially a “data tidy-up” to keep the practice list accurate.

What the process entails

When your practice is due to undertake a reconciliation, you will receive an email from pcse.dataquality@nhs.net to the practice main contact requesting that you send a practice download to PCSE. The email will also contain basic instructions on how to produce the download from your clinical system.
 

Once received PCSE will complete the following actions within 14 days of receipt:

1. This file is then uploaded by PCSE into a system for reconciliation of your practice data against the PDSE. This provides PCSE with three reports.

• Patients registered on your clinical system but not registered with your practice on the PDS
• Patients registered on the PDS with your practice but not registered on your clinical system
• Patients registered on both system but with some data quality differences. (eg: Name, Address, Date of Birth)
   

2. The reports for patients not registered correctly are consolidated and sent to the practice as a ‘Download Summary Report’ with relevant guidance on how to process them.
    
3. The data quality issues are worked through by PCSE to check the differences and take the appropriate action. This could include 
    

• Accepting the GP data
• Accepting the data held on the PDS
• Creating a report for those that PCSE are unable to confirm who holds the correct data. This is returned to the practice as an ‘LR Rejects’ report again with relevant guidance
   

5. Once PCSE have finished processing the reconciliation  an upload file is created containing any changes PCSE have made to the original GP data. This file is sent to the practice to upload back on to the clinical system.
    
6. In a usual reconciliation all the documentation will be sent to the practice in one email.

What is expected of the practice? 

We ask that all action are completed and reports returned to PCSE within 30 days to maintain data integrity

• You should upload the file as soon as possible on to the clinical system and accept or reject the changes.
• The report containing incorrectly registered patients should be checked and comments added. You may need to deduct and re-register some patients. Just because they are active on your clinical system does not mean that they are correctly registered on the PDS.
• Once the report is completed it should be returned to pcse.dataquality@nhs.net who will validate the actions you have taken and deduct any patients that you have confirmed are not registered with you.
• The data quality issues report (LR Rejects) should be checked and if necessary patients contacted to confirm the patient details. We ask that you do not assume the information on the clinical system is accurate as the PDS may have been updated with more current information

These actions will ensure that all patients are accurately registered and must be implemented as a matter of urgency.

When all reports have been received and actions taken or verified the List Reconciliation will be marked as complete and no further action will be needed for 3 years.

Why is it important to maintain an accurate list?

An accurate patient list on the PDS  ensures:

• Correct global sum payments (avoiding over- or under-payment)
• Clean data quality for National Health Screening Services
• Reduced risk of communication errors eg: undelivered mail
• Proper handling of removals, amendments and registrations

Further information

Take a look at our GP Practice List Reconciliation FAQs.