Reporting on the national dataset
From April 2024, a new version of the Mental Health Services Dataset (MHSDS) will be released for NHS funded providers of children and young people’s mental health (CYPMH). The MHSDS v6.0 requires NHS commissioned services in England to make monthly data submissions via the new Strategic Data Collection Service (SDCS) cloud using the Intermediate Database (IDB).
Recording and submitting data for the MHSDS can be a daunting prospect, particularly for smaller, community and voluntary sector NHS funded children’s mental health providers.
We asked members of our team and the children’s mental health providers we work with to share their tips to help you prepare your monthly MHSDS submission. Check out their suggestions below and please don’t hesitate to get in touch with any questions. We are here to help.
Our tips for preparing your MHSDS submission
- Check that your electronic patient record system can generate reports which are mapped to the mandatory MHSDS fields and other non-mandatory fields relevant to your service.
- Ensure you can produce the 4 mandatory tables to return to NHS England and any of the 58 additional optional tables that are relevant. The mandatory fields are the minimum needed to make a successful submission, however NHSE asks that if you have ‘required’ or ‘optional’ data then you provide that too.
- Generate the mandatory and optional reports for your submission as an Access database file, using the Intermediate Database (IDB) template.
- Ensure that your service has a registered SDCS account and can use it to log into the system.
- Make a test submission to the portal in order to check the quality of the data you are submitting, selecting the ‘not for submission’ option before uploading your file.
- If the file fails validation or data quality, the portal will create a Validation file with information about why so that you can correct and resubmit the file.
- NHS England has a step-by-step guide to submission which explains the process as well as a guide on submitting data to the SDCS Cloud portal – find that here.
- If you are a provider who is new to submitting to the MHDS, watch intro videos here.
Children’s mental health software
iaptus CYP is a user friendly system that enables therapists to collect progress and outcomes data within a session as part of treatment, and to quickly and efficiently record the relevant fields for the MHSDS.
The system is the most commonly used electronic patient record system for looking after patients and capturing data for the MHSDS in England. Our customers include community and voluntary sector NHS funded CYPMH service providers such as Barnardo’s, Mind, ADHD Foundation, and Off The Record Bristol, as well as school mental health support teams and NHS Trusts.
The software exists to help services like yours to streamline admin and digitise workflows, so that therapists and clinicians can focus on treating the children and young people in their care. It is packed with features designed to increase efficiency and reduce time spent on admin tasks. Find out more about iaptus CYP here.
If you have any questions and would like to find out more about how the system can support your CAMHS service, please get in touch. We look forward to hearing from you.
