About

How we work

Reviewed by PlainNHS ·

Who we are

PlainNHS is operated by its editorial process, an independent data-journalism publisher registered as a small founder-led operation. We do not employ pseudonymous staff. Our editorial pipeline compiles dataset releases and drafts plain-language framing — every published page is reviewed against the upstream NHS source before going live.

Where the data comes from

Every figure traces back to one of three upstream publishers:

  • NHS Digital — statistical publications, GP practice and ODS data (digital.nhs.uk).
  • NHS England — RTT 18-week, cancer 62-day, A&E 4-hour operational statistics (england.nhs.uk/statistics).
  • Care Quality Commission — inspection ratings, regulatory information (cqc.org.uk).

All three publishers release their datasets under the UK Open Government Licence v3.0 or equivalent open terms.

Our pipeline

  1. Scheduled ETL downloads the most recent monthly publication from each upstream source.
  2. Data is normalised into the PlainNHS schema (trusts, gp_practices, procedures, waiting_times, cqc_ratings).
  3. Every page is server-rendered live from this normalised database — numbers in the page body are produced by `SELECT` statements against the live table, not hardcoded.
  4. Provenance for each value is shown on the page next to the value (data vintage, source URL).

Where AI assists

Our editorial pipeline has two roles: drafting plain-language framing from the upstream source documents (e.g. summarising what an RTT pathway is), and accelerating the codification of the ETL pipeline. Numerical content comes directly from the upstream source — every figure flows directly from the upstream database via SQL. Editorial framing is reviewed against the original source before publication.

What we will not publish

  • Fabricated team biographies or pseudonymous “authors”.
  • Extrapolated or modelled figures that go beyond the published source data.
  • Personal-identifiable information about clinicians (we identify NHS Trusts, GP practices, and procedures — not individuals).
  • Editorial endorsements or rankings beyond what NHS England / CQC themselves publish.

How to verify a number

Every entity page on PlainNHS lists its source agency and links to the upstream NHS publication. Click the source link to read the original release; verify the value against the official downloadable dataset. If you find a discrepancy, write to hello@plainnhs.co.uk and we will investigate.

Corrections policy

See corrections for our published correction process.