EMIS PCN Hub - Demographic Import

Introduction

This article explains the process for completing a Demographic export of GP Practices registered patients and then importing into an EMIS PCN Hub.  

If PCNs wish to use Consultation Write Back within a PCN Hub, a patient must be traced into the hub.  One method is to use Find GP Connect Appointments which will automatically trace patients into a hub from the NHS Spine.  The second method is to complete a patient trace within the hub which will use the Data Sharing Agreements in place to find the patient.  However if a patient has not used the hub service before they will need to be booked in as an unregistered patient and for the hub admin team to trace down.  This can be time consuming and open to human error.  A Demographic Import negates the need to trace patients into the hub who are using the service for the first time.

Any patients registered at a GP Practice after a Demographic Export will need to be booked in as an unregistered patients and traced in.

There are 2 methods to completing the demographic export from every Practice that belongs to the PCN.  The quickest (but more expensive) is to use EMIS Enterprise Search and Reports.  To use Enterprise Search and Reports the system must have the reporting level set to Patient-identifiable Reporting and Practices must authorise on their systems.  PCNs will need to complete and submit the QM1169 Enterprise Search & Reports PID (attached at bottom of this page) to purchase the system.

Alternatively GP practices can run the report themselves and send the exported .csv to the EMIS Migration Team.

Method 1 - Enterprise Search & Reports

Method 2 - Individual Practice Exports

Data Sharing

The legal Basis for sharing and accessing the exported Demographic Data should be covered as part on the Enhanced Data Sharing Agreements in place between all PCN GP Practices as well as the the National data sharing Agreement for GP Connect and Summary Care Record.

CSVs

CSV Delimiter

The delimiter in all CSV files should be pipe delimiter - |

Text Qualification

Where ever possible text qualification in CSV files should be avoided as this can cause issues with strings of text. For example a UPI column should be presented as 12345 and not “12345”. 

Checking CSV Files

EMIS would always recommend checking your CSV files before submitting them to Data Migration, however checking them in Excel can cause issues with leading zeros been removed from fields such as telephone numbers. EMIS would recommend using Notepad or Notepad++ to check the files and avoid these issues.

Sending CSVs to the Data Migration Team

The EMIS Migration Team will set up an account on their SFTP server so the csv files can be securely sent to them.

Submitting Confirmation of Data Upload

When emailing the data migration team to confirm you have uploaded your CSV files to the SFTP, can you please include a count of rows in each CSV file. This will allow us to validate the data we have received is the same as you have submitted. E.g:

Demographics Export

The file to be submitted to the EMIS Migration Team must be called Demographics.csv

The header line for this CSV should be:

UPI|NHSNumber|Title|Forename|CallingName|Surname|DateOfBirth|Sex|DateOfRegistration|DateOfExpiry|DateOfDeath|UsualGPPracticeCode|UsualGPForename|UsualGPSurname|Ethnicity|MaritalStatus|Religion|MainSpokenLanguage|HomeTelephone|WorkTelephone|MobileTelephone|EmailAddress|HouseNameFlatNumber|NumberAndStreet|Village|Town|County|Postcode

Column Information

Attachments

Below is a example of an exported and updated .csv and the EMIS Report that needs to be run (this can be downloaded and imported to EMIS).  Export the report as an .xls file (Excel).

After exporting the Demographics.xls the following adjustments had to be made to the file:

• Open in Excel
• Rename Headers to match above
• Add DateOfExpiry column between DateOfRegistration and DateOfDeath
• Remove spaces from NHS Number and Post Code
• Change format of Date fields (hyphen to forward slashes)
• Save as .csv
• Open with Notepad - replace , with | (comma with pipe delimiter) - save
• Open in Excel and save - ready to send to EMIS Migration Team