NHS Dental Contract Performance & Capacity Signals

This Actor compares official NHS dental contract delivery with commissioned UDA targets and surfaces material divergence and commissioned-activity change signals. It emits one consolidated item per general dental contract. It is not a generic CSV downloader.

Signals

• DELIVERY_PACE_BELOW_TARGET: delivery is at or below 70% of the straight-line commissioned pace and at least 750 UDA behind.
• DELIVERY_PACE_ABOVE_TARGET: delivery is at or above 130% of straight-line commissioned pace and at least 750 UDA ahead.
• CONTRACT_TARGET_INCREASED and CONTRACT_TARGET_DECREASED: the annual general-dental UDA target changed by at least 500 UDA and 10% between consecutive contractual snapshots.

Pace is a simple year-to-date comparison for contracts covering the full financial year: the Actor sums monthly UDA_DELIVERED from April through the common reporting month, then compares it with annual target × months elapsed ÷ 12. Contracts with missing Activity data or partial-year contractual periods are not treated as zero-delivery pace signals. Target-change signals require comparable full-year contractual snapshots with unchanged recurring service-line composition. April and May comparisons are based on few months and may be volatile. These signals are not forecasts of year-end failure, claims of actual spare clinical capacity or appointment availability, NHS performance judgements, guaranteed opportunities, or evidence of financial distress.

Input

• mode: live (default) resolves current official data, or sample uses embedded fixtures and makes zero HTTP requests.
• maxItems: maximum ranked outputs after signal consolidation (default 100).
• minDeliveryGapUda: optional pace-gap threshold (default 750 UDA).
• paceThresholdPercent: optional divergence from 100% straight-line pace (default 30%).

Use { "mode": "sample" } for a deterministic, credential-free demonstration with at least three normal Dataset items. The Actor is stateless: it does not use persistent state or suppress repeated outputs.

Sources and method

The live Actor uses only the public NHS Business Services Authority Open Data Portal CKAN API and direct CSV files:

• English Contractor Monthly General Dental Activity
• English Contractor Monthly General Dental and Orthodontic Contractual Dataset

It dynamically selects the latest month present in both datasets, requires the immediately preceding contractual month, resolves every activity month from April to the current snapshot once, and joins locally by CONTRACT_NUMBER. NHSBSA contractual data may contain multiple service-line rows per contract. The Actor deduplicates identical rows and aggregates compatible service-line records by contract before calculating signals; contracts with conflicting core contractual metadata are excluded rather than guessed. Contractual data contains all service lines held by general dental contracts; the MVP uses only aggregated GENERAL_DENT_UDA_TARGET and does not create orthodontic signals. Required semantic fields fail closed if they disappear. Explicit aliases cover documented compatible renames, including RECURRING_IND to RECURRING_INDICATOR; location fields are optional and support LSOA11_CODE/LSOA21_CODE.

Limitations and attribution

The sources are monthly management information, not real-time. FP17 activity is delayed because submissions can be made after treatment, and contractual data also has a publication lag. Straight-line YTD pace does not account for seasonality, commissioning arrangements, contract timing, corrections, or locally commissioned services that may not be fully represented. Targets and historical records can change. Contract delivery headroom is not the same as actual appointment capacity. No performer-level personal data is emitted.

Contains information supplied by NHS Business Services Authority. Source datasets indicate reuse under the Open Government Licence 3.0; attribute NHS Business Services Authority when reusing results. This Actor is independent and does not imply NHS or NHSBSA endorsement.