PRSB’s role in the study was to provide support and independent assurance of the MDS and the methodology for its development. The DACHA methodology was reviewed and found to follow PRSB principles and methodology involving evidence-based development and effective stakeholder consultation leading to a viable MDS demonstrated through pilot testing.

The PRSB’s independent assurance committee confirmed PRSB assurance of the DACHA MDS and approved the report which included 2 recommendations:

1. Where data was not available for the pilot, the MDS has blanks instead of details of how the data was derived. The MDS could benefit from having details for existing standards or value sets inserted in the blanks for reference for future uses of the MDS.
2. PRSB support the conclusions of the report that being able to obtain data from GP systems, or from the emerging shared care records (which bring in data from GP systems and other local systems), would improve the quality of data compared with data derived from secondary uses datasets such as SUS, particularly in areas such as diagnoses. Appendix 7 of the published Gordon et al (DACHA) report identifies data items that DACHA anticipated obtaining from GP systems but were not able to during the study. A note was added to the end of the Final prototype MDS document to explain the benefit of having GP data if possible