Release notes 2015

All four countries now have data on the site for the year 2014/15. The four countries have continued to diverge in their requirements and common ground is becoming smaller. Where indicators are broadly equivalent I have tried to make them comparable.

There are a couple of things worth noting below.

Wales

Wales was first to publish this year, about two weeks ahead of Scotland and a month ahead of England and Northern Ireland, which was impressive. There are no significant issues with their statistics. They have continued to publish data about local practices groups so I have used these on the site. I can't find any official codes for these so they have a "QDB" code which is entirely made up by me.

Scotland

Most of the Scottish data is fairly straightforward. There seems to have been a bit of muddle about the actual identifiers for indicators and I have used those in the final publication. QS002 was used last year and then for a completely different indicator this year so I have used QS002A for the new one.

England

English data imported fairly easily this year, much helped by a "raw data" publication. There is a new "sub-region" which was used in publication which adds another level to the hierarchy on the site with the exception of Wessex. On the spreadsheets Wessex CCG was listed as its own sub region and to avoid a horrible loop it simply skips the sub region stage.

Northern Ireland

As things stand there is no prevalence data for Northern Ireland where there is no other indicator in that disease area. This affects obesity, epilepsy and learning disability and there is not a lot of smoking data either. I will update this if more information becomes available.

There are now Local Commissioning Groups in Northern Ireland. I have used these in much the same way as the old boards although they cover different areas, most notably by having a separate group for Belfast.