Health Directory

Data Collection Type
National data collections of health and social care in Ireland
Organisation

HSE HIDS – Health Identifiers Service

Health Identifiers Service (HIDS) within the National Operational Performance & Integration Unit, Chief Operations Office, HSE.

The Health Identifier Service provides the HSE with an identity management service for Individuals and Health Services. The HIDS service is the designated authority, provided for under the Health Identifiers Act 2014, which establishes and operates all identifiers in systems across the HSE.

Year established

The Health Directory project commenced in 2011 as the HSE identified the need to create a repository for standard codes and identifiers of service providers and service provider sites as an enabler of HSE systems’ integration.

Statement of purpose

The Health Directory is the basis for the provision of identifiers for Health Service Providers - Practitioners, Locations, People and Organisations. The technical infrastructure for the planned Health Directory is currently in development.

Coverage (geographical and temporal)

National.

Data collection began in 2016 and is ongoing.

Description/Summary

The HSE Health Directory is a technical infrastructure which stores, maintains and publishes standard codes and identifiers for health-related entities such as sites/locations and practitioners, services and organisations.

Data users

Health Directory Data users to date:

- Health Care Practitioners (GPs only – other Health Practitioners in development): circa 5540 GP practitioners offering their services in 8240 sites / locations.
Systems: IBM/Salesforce, Health link, Swift Queue, IPMS, NIMIS, St. John’s of God, MedLis etc.
- Facility IDs: approximately 21,010 line listings of unique IDs for both Health & Social Care and non-Health & Social Care site / location. The directory information is used to support Covid–19 work and reporting by providing a unique 6-digit ‘Facility ID’ to each site / location at which testing is carried out and provide Eircode and geo-referencing to aid tracking and also assist testing and immunisation teams. Systems: COVAX, Covid Care Tracker (CCT) Swift Queue, Pharmavax, Health Protection Surveillance Centre etc.

Data content

The HSE Health Directory is a technical infrastructure which stores, maintains and publishes standard codes and identifiers for health-related entities such as sites/locations and practitioners, services and organisations. This data set is under development but includes location identifiers.

Service Directory
- Site id
- Healthlink id
- Gln
- Site name
- Address
- Phone1
- Phone2
- Phone3
- Mobile
- Fax
- Email
- Mcn
- Mc status
- Gsrn
- First name
- Second name
- Family name
- Aka

C-19 Health Directory
- FacilityID
- SettingType
- ServiceType
- EntityType
- CHO
- PublicHealthArea
- CentreName
- Address1
- Address2
- Address3
- Address4
- County
- Eircode
- ItmEast
- ItmNorth
- Etrs89Lat
- Etrs89long
- GLN
- RegistrationID
- RegisteredProvider
- MaxOccupancy
- RegistrationAuthority
- CreatedDate
- UpdatedDate
- UpdatedAction
- FacilityStatus
- HealthlinkID
- Healthmail

Data dictionary

Upon delivery of the new HSE Health Directory data standardisation to follow ‘future state’ data model; GS1/SNOMED.

National-level identifier variables

There are national unique identifiers, Health Directory is the technical infrastructure which stores, maintains and publishes standard codes and identifiers for health-related entities such as Sites/Locations and Practitioners, Services & Organisations.

Equity stratifiers

The Health Directory captures only the occupation (data source: MCN) and business address of GP practitioners at the moment.

Data collection methodology

Daily demographic feeds from the Department of Social Protection.

Clinical coding scheme

N/A.

Size of national collection

Facility IDs: approximately 21,010 line listings of unique IDs for both Health & Social Care and non-Health & Social Care site / location. The directory information is used to support Covid – 19 work and reporting
Health Care Practitioners (GPs only – other Health Practitioners in development): circa 5540 GP practitioners offering their services in 8240 sites / locations.

Publication frequency

Data accessible on request via web based portal and API (Doctors/Locations API & HD Covid Facilities API).

Accessing data

Data accessible on request via web based portal access and API.

Open data portal access

Not at the moment; early engagement with Open Data team to publish data is commencing.

Email contact
Other comments

Additional information is available on request.