Talking therapies: cohort identification methodology

NHS Talking therapies have commissioned NHS CaaS to provide a cohort of individuals diagnosed with one or more of the long-term health conditions:

• hypertension
• osteoarthritis
• diabetes
• asthma
• coronary heart disease

Each individual must be registered to the West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board (ICB).

NHS Talking Therapies provide psychological therapies that can be used to treat many different mental health problems. They involve talking to a trained professional about your thoughts, feelings and behaviours.

Access to talking therapies can be made via GP referral or self-referral.

Funding has been invested in NHS Talking Therapies to increase the capacity of the service. Based on current uptake it has been highlighted that there are underserved groups. These groups are known to have good outcomes from NHS Talking Therapies but are not accessing the support that could help them. There is also a low level of awareness that you can self-refer to NHS Talking Therapies without seeing a GP.

One of the underserved groups are people with long-term chronic health conditions.

The talking therapies cohort will be targeting this group of individuals, to raise awareness and signpost cohorted individuals to the service.

The clinical at-risk groups within scope of this digital cohort development are individuals with:

• hypertension
• osteoarthritis
• diabetes
• asthma
• coronary heart disease

This document outlines NHS England’s CaaS approach to deliver this cohort using established methodologies.

Data sets used are:

• Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) database
• OPCS-4: Classification of Interventions and Procedures
• Personal Demographics Service (PDS)

The code sets for Hospital Episodes are:

• International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems 10th Revision
• OPCS-4: Classification of Interventions and Procedures