Scarlet fever GP in-hours daily consultation rate

Last updated on Thursday, 17 April 2025 at 03:26pm

Summary

• Topic: Scarlet-fever
• Category: syndromic
• API name: scarlet-fever_syndromic_GPInHours_rateByDay

Rationale

Monitoring trends in daily GP in-hours consultation rates can provide an early warning of human public health threats and provide detail to inform public health action.

Definition

The metric reports the daily GP in-hours consultation rate per 100,000 people, for scarlet fever at participating GP practices in England.

Methodology

Scarlet fever is identified from the diagnoses recorded during GP in-hours consultations. The diagnoses are based on signs and or symptoms and may not be lab confirmed.

The data presented are based on a sentinel syndromic surveillance system, not all GP practices in England are included. We receive an automated feed of anonymised GP in-hours consultation data from participating practices from 2 sources: The Phoenix Partnership (TPP) and Oxford Royal College of General Practitioners Clinical Informatics Digital Hub (ORCHID).

Caveats

Changes to national advice and guidance on access to healthcare services means trends should be treated with caution. The COVID-19 pandemic also involved updates and changes to service provision.

Not all GP practices in England are included in the data and coverage varies by location.

The most recent weekend is not included in the data, since data from ORCHID are currently only available up to the most recent Friday each week.