Data for Hospital Consultants are supplied by the Health and Social Care Information Centre. The data available for downloading includes:

• Hospital Consultants in England (file econcur)

• Dental Consultants in England (file edconcur) Hospital and Dental Consultant information is provided once a month by the Health and Social Care Information Centre (IC). The data is collated from an extract drawn from the Electronic Staff Record system (ESR). Users should note:

• As the extract is sourced from ESR, it will not include any consultants working for an organisation that does not use the system. This limits the extracts to a number of organisation types: SHAs, NHS Trusts, PCTs, Care Trusts and Special Health Authorities

• Two NHS Trusts have opted out of ESR and so information on their consultants continues to be sourced from the yearly census: RFS (Chesterfield Royal Hospital NHS Foundation Trust) and RP6 (Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust). Users should note that information on consultants employed at these two organisations will continue to be less frequently updated.

The Hospital Consultant codes are based on the practitioner's GMC code, to which a prefix of 'C' is added. The General Medical Council (GMC) is the regulating body for doctors, and holds a record of all doctors who are registered to practice in the UK. They allocate each of these doctors a unique code (GMC code). ALL doctors must be registered with the GMC to practice and will therefore have a GMC code. The Dental Consultant codes are based on the practitioner's GDC code to which a prefix of 'CD' is added. The General Dental Council (GDC) is the regulatory body for the dental profession in the UK. As with the GMC they allocate each registered professional a unique registration number (GDC Code). ALL dental practitioners must be registered with the GDC and will therefore have a GDC code. Many consultants working in a dental specialty are also qualified doctors, and therefore have a GMC code in addition to their GDC code. In these cases the GMC takes precedence and the consultants are included in the hospital consultant file only. There are some dental consultants however, who do not have a GMC code. They are qualified purely in their dental specialty and only have a GDC code. These consultants will only appear in the Dental Consultant file. Consultant Codes are for identifying practitioner's work as a Consultant ONLY. Whenever a code is required to identify a GP or a dentist working in practice, the appropriate General Practitioner code (supplied by the NHS Prescription Service, of the NHS Business Services Authority), Dental Practitioner code (supplied by the NHS Dental Service, of the NHS Business Services Authority) or equivalent default code must be used. The General Practitioner and Dental Practitioner codes are both available to download from this site. Please note: Hospital Consultants in Wales (file wconcur) were previously extracted by the Health and Social Care Information Centre from returns in the Annual Census of Medical and Dental Staff. Unfortunately changes to the way the Annual Census is now obtained means that it is no longer possible to collect the Welsh data and we are currently unable to obtain this information from another source. We will continue to publish the file as it is until we are able to archive it following a formal review or secure an alternative source, but users should be aware that the content of this file is no longer being maintained. Monthly and Quarterly Amendment files are available for this data.