To ask the Minister of Health to outline what actions have been taken to ensure that each GP practice has in place comprehensive data coding practices.

Clinical data coding is an integral part of Primary Care/General Practice. All GP Practices code information at the point of care and currently use Read Codes, either Read version 2/CTV version 3. Both versions provide a standard vocabulary for General Practitioners/clinicians to ensure robust clinical coding when recording patient consultations, findings and procedures.

The Health and Social Care Board (HSCB) has developed the General Practice Intelligence Platform (GPIP) to meet the business intelligence needs of individual GP practices, GP Federations and Multi-Disciplinary Teams. The GPIP analytics and reporting service will provide dashboards back to GP practices providing insights that support key areas including data quality improvement, preventative care and ultimately better outcomes for patients. The HSCB continually works with GP practices through GPIP to standardise coding through the development and the issue of recording templates to ensure effective and standardised data coding arrangements and practices.