Glossary

Plain-English glossary

PCND is used well beyond primary care — by Integrated Neighbourhood Teams, the voluntary and community sector, councils and residents. Where a metric on the dashboards uses NHS shorthand, this page explains it in everyday language, says why it matters, and is honest about what it does and doesn't tell you. It is the single source of truth: the same wording appears in the tooltip () beside each figure on every dashboard.

What this tells you · You don't need an NHS background to read this site. Hover or tab to the icon next to any figure on a dashboard to see the same plain-English definition you'll find here.

Getting an appointment

How people reach the practice — appointments, phones and online routes.

Appointments per 1,000 patients: The number of booked GP appointments each month for every 1,000 people registered with the practice. Dividing by list size lets a small practice and a large one be compared fairly.; Why it matters: Shows how much appointment activity a neighbourhood is running relative to its population — a first read on demand and access.; Caveat: Counts booked appointments recorded in the GPAD data set. It is not a measure of whether people could get an appointment when they wanted one.
DNA rate (did-not-attend): The share of booked appointments where the patient did not turn up and did not cancel. "DNA" is NHS shorthand for "did not attend".; Why it matters: Missed appointments waste clinical time and can signal access, reminder or engagement problems in a neighbourhood.; Caveat: From the GPAD data set; only counts appointments that were booked in the first place.
Online front-door share: Of all the contacts a practice handles, the share that arrives through an online form rather than by phone or in person. It is worked out as online-consultation submissions divided by (online submissions + GP appointments).; Why it matters: Captures how much demand comes through the digital front door — useful for judging digital access and channel shift in a neighbourhood.; Caveat: Shown as blank rather than 100% where there is no appointment activity at all (that is a data gap, not a genuinely all-online practice).
Phone answer rate: The share of inbound phone calls a practice actually answers, out of the calls offered. It comes from the cloud-based telephony (CBT) systems practices now use.; Why it matters: A low answer rate is a classic "can't get through on the phone" access problem residents raise.; Caveat: Only practices on a reporting cloud telephony system are covered (CBT is management information, not a full national statistic).
Easy to contact (patient survey): The percentage of patients in the annual GP Patient Survey who rated their experience of contacting the practice as good.; Why it matters: A resident-reported view of access, to set alongside the operational phone and appointment numbers.; Caveat: From the annual GP Patient Survey — a once-a-year snapshot based on a sample of patients, not a live measure.
Friends and Family Test (FFT): A monthly question asking patients whether they would recommend their practice to friends and family. The headline is the percentage who would recommend it.; Why it matters: A simple, frequent satisfaction signal that complements the once-a-year GP Patient Survey.; Caveat: Taking part is voluntary, so coverage is patchy; practices with very few responses are hidden at source.

Staff & capacity

Who works in general practice and how stretched they are.

List size (registered list): The number of patients registered with a practice. It is the "per-head" denominator used to turn raw counts into fair per-1,000 or per-100,000 rates.; Why it matters: Almost every rate on the site is "per registered patient", so list size is the baseline that makes practices comparable.; Caveat: The registered list is who is signed up with the practice, which is not the same as who actually lives in the area (the resident population). The two can differ markedly in some neighbourhoods.
FTE (full-time equivalent): A way of counting staff by hours worked rather than headcount. One FTE is one full-time person; two half-time staff also add up to one FTE.; Why it matters: Lets you compare real staffing capacity between practices regardless of how many people work part-time.
Patients per GP FTE (caseload): How many registered patients there are for each full-time-equivalent fully-qualified GP. A higher number means each GP is covering more people.; Why it matters: A direct read on how stretched the GP workforce is across a neighbourhood.; Caveat: Compared against the nearest parent geography, not England as a whole, to keep the comparison fair.
ARRS (Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme): A national scheme that funds Primary Care Networks to hire wider roles alongside GPs — such as clinical pharmacists, paramedics, physiotherapists and social prescribers. "ARRS FTE" is how much of that workforce a PCN has, counted in full-time-equivalents.; Why it matters: ARRS staff are a big part of how neighbourhoods add capacity and connect people to non-medical support, so it matters to INT and VCS partners.; Caveat: Reported at PCN level, not individual practice; for a single practice the figure shown is the parent PCN. The site does not hold the funded entitlement, so it shows staff in post, not "filled vs funded".
ARRS FTE per 100,000 patients: The ARRS workforce (see above) scaled to a standard population of 100,000 registered patients, so PCNs of different sizes can be compared.; Why it matters: The fairest way to compare additional-roles capacity between neighbourhoods of different sizes.; Caveat: A population-normalised read; the funded ARRS entitlement is not held, so "filled vs entitlement" is not shown.
Direct Patient Care (DPC) staff: Practice staff who give care directly to patients but are not GPs or practice nurses — for example healthcare assistants, pharmacists and paramedics employed by the practice.; Why it matters: Part of the total clinical capacity of a practice beyond doctors and nurses.

Long-term conditions & quality

Recording and managing conditions like diabetes, dementia and mental illness.

QOF (Quality and Outcomes Framework): A voluntary annual scheme that rewards GP practices with points for delivering good, evidence-based care for long-term conditions. "QOF achievement" is the share of the available clinical points a practice earned.; Why it matters: A long-standing, comparable read on the quality and consistency of long-term-condition care across practices.
Recorded prevalence: The share of a practice's patients who are on the register for a given condition (e.g. diabetes) — in other words, how many are formally recorded as having it.; Why it matters: A gap between recorded prevalence and the modelled expected prevalence points to people who likely have the condition but have not been diagnosed yet.; Caveat: Recorded means "written down on the register", which can differ from the true number of people who have the condition.
Expected (modelled) prevalence: A statistical estimate of how many people in an area probably have a condition, based on national models applied to the local population. It is compared with recorded prevalence to estimate undiagnosed cases.; Why it matters: The "find the missing patients" signal — where the model expects more cases than are currently on the register.; Caveat: A modelled estimate, published by OHID Fingertips at broader geographies (often ICB), not an exact local count.
LTC (long-term condition): A health condition that cannot currently be cured but can be managed over time — such as diabetes, high blood pressure, asthma or dementia.; Why it matters: Managing long-term conditions well in the community is central to the neighbourhood-health model.
SMI (severe mental illness): People with conditions such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or other psychoses, held on a practice's severe-mental-illness register. They are entitled to six annual physical-health checks.; Why it matters: People with SMI die younger largely from preventable physical illness, so the six checks are a key health-inequalities measure.; Caveat: The "all six checks" figure is an experimental NHS statistic over a rolling 12-month window; practices that did not submit data are absent rather than zero.
Learning-disability annual health checks: Yearly health checks offered to people on the learning-disability register (aged 14 and over), designed to catch problems early in a group with poorer health outcomes.; Why it matters: A recognised health-inequalities measure that neighbourhood teams and the VCS actively support.; Caveat: On this site the figure is a derived checks-÷-register ratio at England / sub-ICB level, not the official 14+ coverage rate (the source has no eligible-population denominator at practice grain).
Recorded dementia (65+): The share of registered patients aged 65 and over who are recorded on the practice's dementia register.; Why it matters: Recording a diagnosis is the gateway to care planning, medication review and support for patients and carers.; Caveat: This is registration-based recorded prevalence, not the official modelled "diagnosis rate vs expected", which is only published at sub-ICB level and above.
CQC rating: The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is the independent regulator that inspects GP practices and rates them Outstanding, Good, Requires improvement or Inadequate, overall and across five questions (safe, effective, caring, responsive, well-led).; Why it matters: An external quality assurance signal, independent of the activity data on the rest of the site.; Caveat: Reflects the latest inspection, which may be some time ago; some practices are not yet rated.

Medicines & prescribing

What practices prescribe, at what cost, and how carefully.

Prescription items per 1,000 patients: How many individual prescription items are dispensed each month for every 1,000 registered patients. One "item" is one medicine on one prescription.; Why it matters: A population-adjusted read on prescribing volume that pairs with deprivation and age.; Caveat: From the NHSBSA prescribing (EPD) data set; higher volume is not automatically good or bad without context.
Net Ingredient Cost (NIC): The list price of the medicines prescribed, before discounts and dispensing fees. On the site it is often shown as cost per registered patient per year.; Why it matters: Lets prescribing spend be compared fairly between practices of different sizes.; Caveat: The annual figure is the latest month multiplied by twelve, so seasonal months can skew it.
Antibacterial share of items: The share of all prescribed items that are antibacterials (antibiotics — BNF chapter 5.1). It is a signal of antibiotic stewardship, where prescribing carefully helps slow drug resistance.; Why it matters: Over-prescribing antibiotics drives resistance, so a lower share is generally better — a shared public-health goal.; Caveat: The site does not hold the STAR-PU need-weighting, so the plain share of items is used as the honest stewardship read.

Urgent & unplanned care

A&E, NHS 111, ambulances and rapid community response around primary care.

A&E Type-3 share (Urgent Treatment Centres): The share of nearby A&E attendances that go to an Urgent Treatment Centre (UTC) rather than a major, consultant-led (Type-1) A&E. UTCs are the walk-in, GP- and nurse-led units — formerly known as minor-injury units and walk-in centres — that handle less serious problems. "Type 3" is simply the NHS classification for these UTC-style services.; Why it matters: A high UTC (Type-3) share can indicate people using urgent care for problems that primary care could handle.; Caveat: Matched to the nearest acute trust as a geographic proxy for the neighbourhood — it is not a true patient-flow attribution from these practices.
NHS 111 / Integrated Urgent Care: NHS 111 is the free phone and online service for urgent (not life-threatening) health needs. A "disposition" is where 111 sends the caller next — to 999, A&E, a GP, a pharmacy, or self-care.; Why it matters: The mix of 111 dispositions shows how urgent demand is being routed around a neighbourhood.; Caveat: Published only at national, NHS region and ICB-contract level — it does not go down to PCN or practice, so a local scope is shown at its nearest parent area.
2-hour Urgent Community Response (UCR): A service that sends a health or care team to someone at home within two hours of a referral, to help them avoid a hospital admission. The headline is the share of referrals reached within two hours.; Why it matters: A core neighbourhood-health service keeping people well at home — directly relevant to INT partners.; Caveat: Published at ICB level and above, so a local scope is shown at its parent ICB.
Ambulance Category 2 response time: The average time for an ambulance to reach a Category 2 (emergency, e.g. suspected stroke or heart attack) call. It is shown in minutes and seconds; lower is better.; Why it matters: A widely watched measure of pressure on the urgent-care system that a neighbourhood sits within.; Caveat: Reported at England system level, not for individual neighbourhoods.

People & their circumstances

Who a practice serves, where they live and the pressures they face.

Deprivation decile (IMD): The Index of Multiple Deprivation ranks every small area in England from most to least deprived, then splits them into ten equal bands (deciles). Decile 1 is the most deprived tenth; decile 10 the least deprived.; Why it matters: Deprivation shapes health need and demand, so it is the key lens for fairness and inequality across a neighbourhood.; Caveat: Based on the 2025 Indices of Deprivation — the most recent national release.
Resident population: The number of people who actually live in an area, estimated by the Office for National Statistics — as distinct from the number registered with local GP practices.; Why it matters: Councils, INTs and the VCS usually think in terms of residents, so it is the bridge between a practice list and a place.; Caveat: Published for whole Local Authority areas by age and sex; it cannot be broken down to a single practice.
Catchment (registered patients by area): Where a practice or PCN actually draws its patients from, built up from counts of registered patients in each small area (LSOA). It shows the real geography a practice serves.; Why it matters: Lets area-based measures (like deprivation or fuel poverty) be fairly weighted to the people a practice actually looks after.; Caveat: Reflects where registered patients live, which may spread beyond a practice's notional boundary.
Small area (LSOA / MSOA): Standard statistical building blocks used across UK data. An LSOA (Lower-layer Super Output Area) is a small neighbourhood of roughly 1,500 people; an MSOA is a larger grouping of several LSOAs.; Why it matters: They are the common geography that lets health, deprivation and wider-determinant data be joined together for a place.
Wider determinants of health: The non-medical things that shape health — income, employment, housing, fuel poverty and so on. The site brings several of these in at small-area level.; Why it matters: Most of what keeps people well or unwell sits outside the clinic, which is exactly the space neighbourhood teams, councils and the VCS work in.; Caveat: Several of these are modelled small-area estimates — good for spotting high and low areas and general trends, not precise point figures.

How to read the numbers

The measuring conventions and honest caveats used across the site.

Grain (level of detail): The smallest level a data set is actually published at — for example practice, PCN, ICB, region or England. The site always shows a metric at its true grain and never pretends a national figure is a practice-level one.; Why it matters: Knowing the grain stops you over-reading a broad number as if it were local — a core honesty principle of the site.; Caveat: Where a data set is only published for a wider area, a local scope is shown at its nearest parent level, clearly labelled.
Denominator: The "out of how many" figure used to turn a raw count into a fair rate — usually the registered list. Saying "per 1,000 patients" means the count has been divided by the list size and scaled.; Why it matters: Without a denominator, a big practice always looks busier than a small one; rates make them comparable.; Caveat: Most rates here use the registered list as the denominator, which is who is signed up rather than who lives locally.
Nearest-parent comparator: The most local sensible thing to compare a figure against — usually the geography one step up (a practice against its PCN, a PCN against its ICB) rather than jumping straight to England.; Why it matters: A like-for-like local benchmark is fairer and more useful than only comparing to a national average.
Modelled estimate: A figure produced by a statistical model rather than counted directly — for example expected disease prevalence, or small-area income and fuel poverty.; Why it matters: Modelled figures are useful for spotting patterns and high/low areas, but should be read as indicative rather than exact.; Caveat: Often carries a margin of error and is not a within-area time series.
Data currency (how up to date): How recent the underlying figures are. Different NHS data sets update at different speeds — some monthly, some quarterly, some yearly — so the "latest" period varies from metric to metric.; Why it matters: A figure can be the newest available and still be several months old; knowing the period prevents mis-reading it as "today".; Caveat: Each explorer and the Data Library show the exact period the figures cover.

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