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Digital

Publication, Part of

Adult Critical Care Data in England, April 10 to March 11, Experimental Statistics

Publication Date:
Geographic Coverage:
England
Date Range:
01 Apr 2010 to 31 Mar 2011

Summary

This is the third publication of adult critical care data, which forms part of Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) and is collected as part of the Critical Care Minimum Data Set (CCMDS). It covers critical care periods ending between 1 April 2010 and 31 March 2011, and draws on records submitted by providers as an attachment to the inpatient record.

During the period covered by this report, not all NHS trusts with critical care capacity have completed data submissions, so data quality and coverage is variable in some cases. Publishing the HES critical care data as experimental statistics allows for discussion, analysis and promotion of the dataset, which in turn should lead to improved coverage and data quality.

Highlights

  • Critical care data was supplied by 153 providers, compared to 161 reporting critical care capacity through Department of Health central returns in 2010-11.[1] In 2009-10, 137 providers submitted critical care data, with 128 providers submitting data in 2008-09.
  • The full adult critical care dataset contained 260,213 critical care records ending in the year 2010-11. Of these, 215,728 were able to be used for analysis having limited the data to overcome data quality issues. This is an increase of 27.5 per cent (46,552 useable records) compared to 2009-10 (see resource 'Critical Care Records').
  • In addition to increased overall coverage, completion rates have also increased for the second year running, with an increase in rates for all non-mandatory fields in the CCMDS. 
  • 57.5 per cent (124,143) of the analysed records related to male patients and 42.4 per cent (91,571) to female. These percentages have changed very little from 2009-10 and 2008-09 (in both of these years the percentage split was 58.0 per cent male and 42.0 per cent female). Analysis by HRG shows that the greatest number of critical care periods for male patients are for cardiac and coronary conditions (26.5 per cent of the male total), while the greatest number for female patients are for problems of the digestive system (17.0 per cent of the female total).
  • The greatest number of critical care records were recorded for patients between the ages of 70 and 74, making up 12.8 per cent (27,528) of the records analysed. This compares to 13.2 per cent (22,270) in 2009-10 and 13.0 per cent (17,214) in 2008-09.
  • There were nearly double the number of admissions to critical care on weekdays than weekends. On average, each weekday contributed around 16.5 per cent of the week's admissions, compared to 8.7 per cent on Saturday or Sunday.

Footnote

  1. One provider that supplied critical care data was not included in the Department of Health central return.
  2. There were 14 records where gender was not recorded.

Resources

Last edited: 11 April 2018 4:01 pm