NHS UK Providers Scraper — GP, Pharmacy, Dentist, Care Home

Every UK healthcare provider from the official NHS Organisation Data Service (ODS) registry — GP practices, pharmacies, dental practices, NHS trusts, hospices, care homes and more, with full addresses and phone numbers.

This Actor reads NHS England's official open-data API. It does not scrape HTML, so there is no login, no proxy, no CAPTCHA, and nothing to break when a website changes its markup — which is why it has a 100% run success rate.

What NHS provider data does this scraper extract?

Every record carries the full registry entry — address, phone, roles and all:

Field	Meaning
odsCode	Official ODS organisation code (e.g. L81008)
name	Registered organisation name
addressLine1/2, town, county, country, uprn	Full registered address
phone, website	Registered contacts where the registry holds them
primaryRoleId / primaryRoleDescription	Provider type (e.g. GP practice, pharmacy)
roles	All ODS roles with names, primary flag and status
relationships	Organisation-hierarchy links — e.g. an NHS trust site "IS OPERATED BY" its parent trust
postCode	Registered postcode
status	Active / Inactive
lastChangeDate	Last registry change (useful for incremental syncs)
operationalStart/End, legalStart/End	Operational and legal dates
orgLink	Canonical registry URL for the organisation

Turning Include full address, phone & roles off (includeDetails: false) gives a faster, lighter run with just the identity fields:

odsCode, name, status, primaryRoleId, primaryRoleDescription, postCode, orgRecordClass, lastChangeDate, orgLink.

Optional enrichments

Enrichment	Adds	Turn on with
Add lat/long geocoding	latitude, longitude — the organisation's postcode geocoded via the free, open postcodes.io service (Ordnance Survey / ONS open data). null when a postcode can't be resolved. Works in search or detail mode.	includeGeo: true
Resolve relationship target names	Fills relationships[].targetName with each related organisation's registered name (e.g. the parent NHS trust). Needs detail data — detail mode, or includeDetails: true in search mode.	includeRelationshipNames: true

With Only new since last run enabled, every returned record also carries isNew: true.

How to scrape NHS providers with this Actor

1. Pick a mode: search (filters below) or detail (pass odsCodes).
2. In search mode set at least one filter: name, postCode, providerType (GP practice, pharmacy, dental, NHS trust, hospice, care home, …), roleId (any official role code), lastChangeDate for a one-off incremental sync, or onlyNewSinceLastRun for automatic incremental syncs across scheduled runs.
3. Run and export JSON, CSV or Excel — or call it over the API:

Postcode search takes a district, a full postcode, or a whole city. BS1 (district), SW1A 1AA (full postcode), or LS — a bare postcode area, which expands to every Leeds district and returns the ~2,800 providers across the whole city in one run. M gets you all of Manchester, B all of Birmingham.

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>")
run = client.actor("nomad-agent/uk-nhs-ods-providers-scraper").call(run_input={
    "mode": "search",
    "postCode": "BS1",
    "providerType": "pharmacy",
    "includeDetails": True,
})
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item["odsCode"], "|", item["name"], item["postCode"])

curl -X POST \
  "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/nomad-agent~uk-nhs-ods-providers-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"mode": "search", "postCode": "BS1", "providerType": "gp_practice"}'

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	select	search	search queries the registry with the filters below; detail fetches full records for the ODS codes in odsCodes.
name	string	–	Case-insensitive substring match on the organisation name.
postCode	string	(prefilled BS1 in Console)	UK postcode district (BS1), full postcode (SW1A 1AA), or whole postcode area (LS = all of Leeds). Prefix match on the registered address.
providerType	select	any	Common provider types mapped to official ODS role codes (GP practice, pharmacy, dental, NHS trust, NHS trust site, hospice, care home, optical site, independent provider, branch surgery).
specialty	string	–	Free-text specialty (e.g. pharmacy, hospice, dental), matched against the ODS role vocabulary. Ignored if providerType (non-any) or roleId is set.
roleId	string	–	Any official ODS role code (advanced) — overrides providerType and specialty.
status	select	active	active, inactive, or all.
lastChangeDate	string (YYYY-MM-DD, datepicker)	–	Only organisations changed on or after this date. The registry rejects dates more than ~185 days in the past (HTTP 406).
onlyNewSinceLastRun	boolean	false	Search only organisations changed since this Actor's own last successful run (server-side, via the registry's LastChangeDate filter). Overrides lastChangeDate once a prior run exists. Search mode only. Tags every record isNew: true.
odsCodes	array	–	ODS codes to fetch in detail mode (e.g. L81008, RA7, FLM49).
includeDetails	boolean	true	Enrich every search hit with the full registry record — address, phone, roles, dates. No extra cost per record; adds ~35s per 1,000 organisations. Turn off for a faster, codes-and-names-only run.
includeGeo	boolean	false	Add latitude/longitude by geocoding each postcode via the free postcodes.io service. Best-effort — unresolved postcodes return null.
includeRelationshipNames	boolean	false	Resolve relationships[].targetName (needs detail data) — one extra API call per unique related organisation.
maxItems	integer	100	Hard cap on organisations returned. Each result is billed, so start low and raise once your filter is dialed in. 0 = no cap.
concurrency	integer	8	(Advanced) Parallel detail-record fetches, clamped to 1–16.

Output example

Default run (includeDetails: true) — a real GP practice, with the contact data you actually want:

{
  "odsCode": "L81008",
  "name": "SHIREHAMPTON GROUP PRACTICE",
  "status": "Active",
  "primaryRoleId": "RO177",
  "primaryRoleDescription": "PRESCRIBING COST CENTRE",
  "addressLine1": "HEALTH CENTRE",
  "town": "BRISTOL",
  "postCode": "BS11 9SB",
  "phone": "0117 9162226",
  "orgRecordClass": "RC1",
  "lastChangeDate": "2024-07-15",
  "roles": [
    {"id": "RO177", "name": "PRESCRIBING COST CENTRE", "primary": true, "status": "Active"},
    {"id": "RO76", "name": "GP PRACTICE", "primary": false, "status": "Active"}
  ],
  "orgLink": "https://directory.spineservices.nhs.uk/ORD/2-0-0/organisations/L81008",
  "source": "nhs-ods"
}

Lighter run (includeDetails: false):

{
  "odsCode": "L81008",
  "name": "SHIREHAMPTON GROUP PRACTICE",
  "status": "Active",
  "primaryRoleId": "RO177",
  "primaryRoleDescription": "PRESCRIBING COST CENTRE",
  "postCode": "BS11 9SB",
  "orgRecordClass": "RC1",
  "lastChangeDate": "2024-07-15",
  "orgLink": "https://directory.spineservices.nhs.uk/ORD/2-0-0/organisations/L81008",
  "source": "nhs-ods"
}

Detail mode / includeDetails: true — a real NHS trust site, showing the relationships link back to its parent trust:

{
  "odsCode": "A0A1E",
  "name": "CAMHS - ADASH",
  "status": "Active",
  "primaryRoleId": "RO198",
  "primaryRoleDescription": "NHS TRUST SITE",
  "postCode": "AL10 8HR",
  "orgRecordClass": "RC2",
  "lastChangeDate": "2024-05-08",
  "orgLink": "https://directory.spineservices.nhs.uk/ORD/2-0-0/organisations/A0A1E",
  "source": "nhs-ods",
  "addressLine1": "DOWNS FARM CENTRE",
  "town": "HATFIELD",
  "country": "ENGLAND",
  "roles": [
    {"id": "RO198", "name": "NHS TRUST SITE", "primary": true, "status": "Active"},
    {"id": "RO31", "name": "PPA EPACT SYSTEM", "primary": false, "status": "Active"}
  ],
  "relationships": [
    {"relTypeId": "RE6", "relTypeName": "IS OPERATED BY", "targetOdsCode": "RWR", "targetName": null}
  ],
  "operationalStart": "2024-03-22"
}

Integrations

Every run's results are available as a dataset you can export as JSON, CSV, Excel (XLSX), or query straight from the API with run-sync-get-dataset-items. Wire it into Make, Zapier, or n8n via their native Apify integrations, or drive it programmatically through the Apify MCP server so an LLM agent can call this Actor as a tool.

Pricing

Pay per event — no subscription, pay only for what you fetch. Full address and phone data is included at no extra charge.

From 20 July 2026: $0.005 per Actor start + $0.001 per organisation — $1 per 1,000 providers. 1,000 providers ≈ $1.01. Every GP practice in England (~6,400) ≈ $6.41.

Until then: $0.05 per start + $0.004 per organisation.

Use cases

• Healthcare lead generation: every pharmacy, GP practice or dental practice in a region, with addresses and phone numbers
• Master-data / CRM enrichment keyed on official ODS codes
• Incremental registry syncs via lastChangeDate, or automatically on a schedule via onlyNewSinceLastRun
• Health-tech integrations that need canonical NHS organisation reference data
• Market analysis of UK primary care, community pharmacy and independent providers
• Mapping organisational hierarchy (e.g. which trust operates which site) via the relationships field (with includeRelationshipNames for resolved names)
• Geospatial analysis and mapping via optional latitude/longitude geocoding (includeGeo)

FAQ

Is it legal to scrape NHS ODS data? Yes. The ORD API is the official, public, unauthenticated open-data API of NHS England's Organisation Data Service, and the data is published under the Open Government Licence v3 — free to use, including commercially, with attribution ("Contains information from NHS England, licenced under the current version of the Open Government Licence").

Do I need an API key or login? No. The ORD API requires no authentication of any kind.

Which countries does it cover? Primarily England (plus border/cross-registered organisations in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland where they hold ODS codes).

Why does a GP practice show PRESCRIBING COST CENTRE as its primary role? That is how ODS models GP practices — the primary role is RO177 with RO76 (GP PRACTICE) as a non-primary role. Filtering by the "GP practice" provider type handles this for you.

What if an ODS code isn't found? It is logged and skipped — the run continues with the other codes.

How fresh is the data? Every run hits the live registry API. No caching layer in between.

How do I run this on a schedule and only get what's new? Turn on Only new since last run (onlyNewSinceLastRun). It stores this Actor's last successful run date and, on the next run, asks the registry for organisations changed since then — no need to track ids yourself, and no re-paying for organisations you already have. Every returned record is tagged isNew: true.

The very first run with the flag on has nothing to compare against, so it records today as the starting checkpoint and returns no organisations (charging nothing per result); every run after that is incremental. If you also set a name / postCode / providerType filter, that first run returns the full matching set as your baseline and goes incremental from the next run on.

Why is this more reliable than scraping the NHS website? Because it isn't scraping. It calls NHS England's official ORD open-data API, so there is no HTML to break, no bot detection, and no rate-limit wall — the Actor's public run history is 100% successful. Website scrapers of the same data fail regularly when the page markup or anti-bot rules change.

What's in relationships? Organisation-hierarchy links from the registry's own data, e.g. an NHS trust site record links back to the trust that operates it (relTypeId: "RE6", "IS OPERATED BY"). Only present in detail mode / with Include full details on. targetName is null by default; turn on Resolve relationship target names (includeRelationshipNames) to fill in each related organisation's name.

Can I get map coordinates? Yes — turn on Add lat/long geocoding (includeGeo) and each record gains latitude/longitude, geocoded from its postcode via the free, open postcodes.io service. Unresolvable postcodes return null.

Something broken or missing? Open an issue on the Actor's Issues tab — it is monitored and fixes ship fast.

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Found this useful? A ⭐ review on the Actor page genuinely helps — and feature requests posted in Issues get built.

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