To ask the Minister of Health to outline any assessment that has been made to ensure his Department’s current data definitions provide an accurate understanding of pressures across health and social care.

Mr Nesbitt

Data definitions do not directly measure or describe pressure within Health and Social Care. Rather, they serve to enable the consistent recording and reporting of information across the sector. That consistency supports robust assessments of system pressures using statistical and operational data. The Department makes use of a combination of official statistics and management information, grounded in standardised data definitions, to evaluate pressures in health and social care environments.

That is further supported by statistical quality assurance processes, ongoing collaboration with data producers through the system and regular reviews of both data definitions and sources to ensure continued relevance and accuracy in reflecting operational realities.

Mr Nesbitt

The logic of that is that the answer is yes, but there is a logic to reporting only vacant positions that are under active recruitment because we are so strapped for funding in the Department that that is almost an inevitability. Does it skew the risks and the shortfalls? Off the top of my head, I am saying that, yes, I would like to know exactly what is missing rather than what we are trying to fill.

Mrs Dodds

Minister, we all welcome the reduction in waiting lists, and those are really important, valuable and good steps forward. However, recently at the Health Committee, we had presentations that talked about large reductions in waiting lists of those who had been waiting for four years and more. The South Eastern Trust came in two weeks ago to tell us that it had a 60% reduction in its waiting list. The figure had fallen from around 20,000 to around 8,000; I do not have the exact figures in front of me. When I asked the representatives to detail for us how many of those people had been treated, they said that they did not know. Do you not think that data, particularly data around waiting lists, needs to be accurate, transparent and full of information?

Mr Nesbitt

I absolutely do. The Member is maybe suggesting that some of the reduction in waiting lists is not through activity beyond validation: maybe or maybe not. Validation is a very important and necessary process. By the end of the financial year, which is a week or more away, I want to know not that we have exceeded the Programme for Government target of 70,000 but how we have exceeded it. I want to see it broken down by appointments, diagnoses and procedures. That, by necessity, will involve knowing the numbers trust by trust. I was not aware of the experience that the Member had with that trust, but I would like to rectify that as we come to financial year end.

Ms Flynn

Minister, I have been informed that the publication of the quarterly child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) data has been paused until quality assurance is undertaken. You referenced that in your original answer to John Blair. Can you elaborate a bit more on why that is the case or why that process is being taken forward?

Mr Nesbitt

I am afraid that I am not aware of that specific, but I can ask officials to bring me up to speed. Sometimes, with the roll-out of Encompass, we are still saying that the datasets are not validated yet. I have to accept that two years seems to be the norm for bedding in a system such as Encompass. It seems like a long time to me, but it is what it is.

Mr Stewart

Minister, data and understanding data is hugely important, particularly in the health service, which sees a huge volume of patients in high-pressure environments. How will Encompass help us better understand pressure and alleviate it?

Mr Nesbitt

By standardising data capture, improving timeliness and reducing manual returns, Encompass will enable more consistent and reliable analysis of the flow, the demand and the capacity. It already supports improved reporting in areas such as inpatient escalation beds. Further work is under way to complete ED corridor care reporting, which is important to me, and reduce reliance on manual manipulation of extracted data. That will give us consistent real-time data about the pressures across the Health and Social Care system. As I said to Ms Flynn, however, it will take a bit of time to bed in. The best description that I have had of it came from somebody working in the system, who said, "We have an engine to get us to the moon, but, at the moment, we are using it only for a short break". Its potential remains absolutely massive, particularly for public health initiatives.

Mr Speaker

We will now move on to topical questions.