Sub-series details: CRDA/24/DS/1999

This datasets in this sub-series were transferred from the Department of Health on a CD-ROM which was received by NDAD on 24 October 2000.

This sub-series holds the Compendium of Clinical and Health Indicators (CCHI) for 1999, including indicators from the Public Health Common dataset (PHCDS), Population Health Outcome indicators and Our Healthier Nation indicators.

The PHCDS, comprising several subsets of indicators, forms a significant part of the CCHI. The 1999 PHCDS, providing data for years up to and including 1998, was released in its conventional format to Health Authorities in England in February 2000. It provided data for Health Authorities with boundaries as at April 1999 and for Local Authorities with boundaries as at April 1998.

Further information about the CCHI is provided in the Series Catalogue and Dataset Documentation Catalogue. Similiar to the PHCDS, the CCHI provides health authorities with a 'common currency' for studying and comparing information about health.

The sub-series consists of 36 datasets, which contain various indicators for health regions in England and Wales.

Boundary changes

Local Authority boundary changes introduced in the 1997 PHCDS were complex and care should be taken when comparing data across the years. For further information about these changes, see the 1997 Sub-series catalogue.

The 1999 PHCDS is restructured into the condition/health topic-based format of the CCHI. Unlike the previous year, no accompanying maps or graphs for selected indicators have been transferred with this dataset. The tables (where possible) provide data for:

• England and Wales
• England
• Regional Offices
• Government Office Regions
• ONS area classification groups
• Health Authorities (boundaries as of April 1999)
• Local Authorities (boundaries as of April 1998).

For each indicator, the data for all the above areas are supplied in one file, and not in separate files for Health and Local Authorities, as in previous years. The datafiles are broken down into the following categories: England and Wales, England, 8 Regional Offices, 9 Government Office Regions, 15 ONS area classification groups, 99 Health Authorities and 354 local authorities. A list of Health Authorities and codes (as at April 1999) is provided here. It shows the constitutent Health Authorities of each Regional Office. NDAD holds a similar list for the 1996 dataset (see the Dataset Documentation Catalogue, reference CRDA/24/DD/6/4), but unlike the 1996 list, the 1999 list is simply a straight list of all the area 'types' and the areas, and doesn't actually show which health authorities are in which region.

For further information about the CCHI and subsequent changes, see the data definitions and user guide for the CCHI in the Dataset Documentation Catalogue, reference CRDA/24/DD/1/10/1.

The tables in CRDA/24/DS/1999 were transferred to NDAD in the form of Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. These files were opened in Microsoft Excel 97 (under Windows 98). Visual Basic modules were written to process them so that the headings, subheadings, other metadata, and blank columns or rows between the data were removed and the format of the cells set to Microsoft Excel General format before saving the data in CSV (Comma separated variable) format. In a number of the original files with names ending in "t", the data for each area is split over two lines. A Visual Basic module was written to move the figures so that there is one line per area. For an example of this type of table, see CRDA/24/DS/1999/3/3/4 (073drt) by clicking on the image below:

Some cells in the original spreadsheets contain real numbers, but they are formatted to display as integers. Others which have many figures after the decimal point are displayed with just 2 decimal places. In order to preserve the actual data, this formatting has been removed. However, it must be assumed that original users of the spreadsheets would have seen the data as it had been, originally formatted. Although some files contain fields that have many decimal places, users are advised that NDAD recommends that all data in the CCHI is not quoted at more than two decimal places. This is because fields are not formatted with more than two decimal places in the original spreadsheet files. NDAD assumes that this is because the data creators considered the data to be accurate to, at most, two decimal places. The field formats set by NDAD (DOUBLE or INTEGER) have been specified according to the data the cells contain, rather than how they are displayed within the original spreadsheet.

The CCHI in its original format did not use specific field names as such: generally, spreadsheet packages do not require data to be held within named fields. (The indicators within CCHI had original names which have been preserved but these equate to the table name within NDAD). To identify fields within a table, the first field is named CODE (for the area code), the second AREA (for the name of the area). The rest of the fields have been named sequentially, starting with the third field as F3, the fourth as F4 etc. These are not from the original data files but have been allocated by NDAD during the data conversion process. The column headings in the spreadsheet form the field descriptions. Where a spreadsheet contains one or more footnotes or other explanatory notes, the text was automatically extracted for inclusion in the relevant Table catalogue and is provided at the end of that catalogue under the heading 'Other information'.

Further discrepancies and NDAD treatments include the following:

Table 082crp1 (CRDA/24/DS/1999/4/5/1) has a row of data for 'REGIONAL OFFICES'. The data in that section, presumably in error, is located one row above where it should be - with the result that Y12 has no data. The same applies to the first and second rows for 'ENGLAND AND WALES' and 'ENGLAND'. In order to correct this, data was moved to the appropriate rows using the Excel "cut and paste" commands.

Table 085crp3 (CRDA/24/DS/1999/4/8/3) displayed ""#VALUE!"" in the cells relating to the local authority named Wakefield (there were no underlying formulae in these cells; presumably these had been overwritten by indicative error text at some stage prior to transfer to NDAD). NDAD's treatment was to replace these cells with blank entries.

Processing revealed that certain new AREA codes have been introduced since the previous annual dataset; for example in tables 001no (CRDA/24/DS/1999/1/1) and 002no (CRDA/24/DS/1999/2), A - I for GOVERNMENT OFFICE REGIONS and A - O for ONS AREA CLASSIFICATION). In previous years of the PHCDS, relationships between tables were set up based on a single unique key field (the CODE field). In the 1999 PHCDS, however, the same codes are used for 2 types of area (eg A equates to both 'North East' Government Office Region and ONS Area Classification 'Rural Amenity'). NDAD's treatment has been to use two fields, AREA and CODE, in a combined key to express the linking relationship. This approach differs to previous years.

Further processing was required to produce the text for the 'Scope and content' section of the Table Catalogues; a Visual Basic module was written to extract information from the original data definitions and user guide document. The information extracted from this single document was the "definition file" for each indicator. (The data definitions and user guide for the CCHI is held in the Dataset Documentation Catalogue, reference CRDA/24/DD/1/10/1.)

The 1999 Compendium and its related documentation are now open without restriction. On transfer the materials were closed for five years, becoming open at the end of 2004.

The language of the materials is English.

Dataset data definitions and user guide for computer files relating to the 1999 CCHI have been transferred to NDAD and can be consulted via the Dataset Documentation Catalogue, reference CRDA/24/DD/1/10/1.

The data files for the 1999 datasets were supplied in two formats: Lotus 1-2-3 (WK4) and Microsoft Excel 97. Only the Excel files have been processed by NDAD for preservation in the archive.

The data is divided into 36 datasets by topic, which match the structure of the data as transferred to NDAD, namely 36 condition/health topic folders. For further information on the structure of the data and documents, see the data definitions and user guide in the Dataset Documentation Catalogue, reference CRDA/24/DD/1/10/1.

Also included as part of the original transfer (because they were included on the published CD-ROM) were 2 folders containing the data for Health Authorities from the Health Surveys for England (April 1996 boundaries), and the 1998 Primary Care Group (PCG) population data. These materials have already been accessioned by NDAD as part of the 1998 datasets. For access to these datasets, see the 1998 Subseries catalogue. A 39th folder contained the Clinical Indicators publication Quality and performance in the NHS: Clinical Indicators, and its Technical Supplement, both published by the NHS Executive in June 1999; these are preserved in the Dataset Documentation Catalogue as CRDA/24/DD/5/2/1 and CRDA/24/DD/5/2/2.

Details of the sources which were used to produce the CCHI data files, and descriptions of how the data was checked by ONS, are provided in the Series Catalogue. For further information about the presentation of the data, see the data definitions and user guide (Dataset Documentation Catalogue, reference CRDA/24/DD/1/10/1).

The original spreadsheet files were compared to the expected contents as described in the data definitions and user guide for the 1999 CCHI (see the Dataset Documentation Catalogue, reference CRDA/24/DD/1/10/1). No discrepancies were noted. However, during processing and checking of the data, certain anomalies were noted, whose treatment by NDAD is described above in Digital processing and conversion.

In CRDA/24/1999/4, certain tables do not have codes for the HA areas: the heading in the tables is 'HEALTH AUTHORITIES (boundaries as of April 1996)'. This will affect the linking of data between tables. The tables are: 115mnp1, 115mnp3, 116mnp1, 116mnp3, 117mnp1, 117mnp3, 118mnp1, 118mnp3, 119pcp1, 119pcp3, 120pcp1, 120pcp3, 121mnp1, 121mnp3, 122mnp1, 122mnp3, 123pcp1, 123pcp3 (CRDA/24/DS/1999/4/17/1 - CRDA/24/DS/1999/4/25/3).

Spot checks were carried out to compare the transformed data against the data in the original Excel spreadsheets. These included comparing the values of specific fields and checking that the totals of numeric fields were the same. In addition, each table was checked to ensure that the overall number of records and fields remained the same. No discrepancies were detected between the original and transformed data. The only differences found resulted from rounding and/or floating point representation, particularly for example where the original numerical data displayed 12 figures after the decimal point. The level of accuracy in the transformed data is restricted by the "General" field format in Excel (which generally displays only 8 figures after the decimal point).

Dataset catalogues provide more detailed information about individual datasets, and are currently available for the following dataset(s):