Treatment Function and Main Specialty Standard
Summary
- Developers of information standards, data collections and data extractions
- Healthcare bodies with systems recording Treatment Function/Main Specialty
- Appointment / scheduling
- Clinical decision support
- Data definitions and terminologies
- Information governance
- Reference data
- Referrals
- Community health
- Dentistry
- Hospital
- Maternity
- Mental health
- Pharmacy
- Urgent and Emergency Care
Documentation
This information standard defines the Treatment Function and Main Specialty classifications used to support the national reporting and analysis of clinical workforce activity throughout the NHS, through data sets such as the Commissioning Data Sets (CDS).
Treatment Function is a division of clinical work and is based on main specialties, incorporating approved sub-specialties and treatment interests used by lead care professionals. Treatment Function Codes (TFCs) are used to record, report on, extract and flow activity undertaken, irrespective of the type of healthcare professional who performs it.
Main Specialty is the specialty within which a Consultant is recognised or contracted to the organisation. The main specialties list is aligned to specialties recognised by the Royal Colleges and Faculties and the General Dental Council.
Changes in this release include:
- new TFCs for services that are not currently represented as a Treatment Function, enabling commissioning of new services that are not currently represented in the TFC list to be recorded
- amendment of the definitions of existing TFCs that are unclear or no longer accurate
- amendment to the names of existing TFCs that are out of date
- updates to the list of Main Specialties to ensure that the list is aligned with the specialties recognised by the Royal Colleges and Faculties and the General Dental Council
- a change of name to the standard, from the previous title of National Specialty List, to better represent the scope of the standard.
In addition, the documentation has been updated to provide clarification on the governance and maintenance of the TFCs and the Main Specialty list.
Health and care organisations must review the impact of this information standard and make appropriate changes to local health IT systems from 2 April 2020 and before 1 April 2021.
Changes to national Information Standards, Collections and Extractions (ISCE) will be implemented in agreement with developers of those ISCE.
Developers of information standards, data collections and data extractions (ISCE), including NHS Digital, must assess the impact of this change, and build in requirements as appropriate to the next release of their individual ISCE.
Health and care organisations must ensure that where Treatment Function and Main Specialty codes are recorded in health IT systems (outside of national ISCE), those systems must use the codes set out in the Requirements Specification.