Dear Scott,
Planned changes to adult social care data
Thank you for your letter setting out the forthcoming work that you are planning on undertaking to adult social care data in Public Health Scotland (PHS).
We welcome your plans to define a care home minimum dataset and to progress broader data transformation efforts. It is also good to see changes being made to ease the burden on data providers for the monthly management information on people awaiting social care assessments or care at home.
We appreciate you setting out the rationale for pausing the 2025/26 Care Home Census in order to make these improvements. We understand that developments to statistical outputs often require a trade off with available resources and acknowledge that this is an appropriate course of action in this instance based on the information you have provided. As the development work progresses, we encourage you to keep users informed of progress and monitor the impact of pausing these statistics.
We are glad to hear of the positive impact of our 2020 systemic review of Adult Social Care Statistics in Scotland and commend PHS for taking forward actions to ensure that the social care data landscape delivers statistics that better meet user needs.
I would also like to thank you for your letter regarding the new monthly statistics on NHS Waiting Times – Stage of Treatment. As you note we will shortly be undertaking a compliance review on these statistics, and we will write to you once this has concluded.
Yours sincerely
Ed Humpherson
Director General for OSR
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