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Publication, Part of

Adult Critical Care Data in England - April 2014 to March 2015

Publication Date:
Geographic Coverage:
England
Date Range:
01 Apr 2014 to 31 Mar 2015

Summary

This is a report on adult critical care activity in English NHS hospitals and English NHS-commissioned activity in the independent sector. This annual publication covers the financial year ending March 2015. It contains final data and replaces the provisional data that are published each month.

 

The data are taken from the Hospital Episodes Statistics (HES) data warehouse. HES contains records of all admissions, appointments and attendances for patients admitted to NHS hospitals in England. The HES data used in this publication draws on records submitted by providers as an attachment to the admitted patient care record.

 

This publication shows the number of adult critical care records during the period, with a number of breakdowns including admission details, discharge details, level of deprivation, Healthcare Resource Groups (HRG) and support type.

 

The purpose of this publication is to inform and support strategic and policy-led processes for the benefit of patient care. This document will also be of interest to researchers, journalists and members of the public interested in NHS hospital activity in England.

Highlights

In 2014-15:

 

Critical Care Periods
• There were 258,956 records of ACC periods usable for analysis, an increase of 3.7 per cent on the 249,735 records usable for analysis in 2013-14.
• Nearly twice as many critical care periods were recorded as starting on each weekday (between 14.9 per cent and 17.2 per cent) as on a Saturday (9.6 per cent) or Sunday (8.7 per cent).
• More critical care periods were recorded as starting between 18:00 - 18:59 than any other hour in the day (8.0 per cent of all recorded start times).


Critical Care Patients
• The majority of all critical care records were for male patients (56.9 per cent, 147,240 records).
• Nearly all records (95.4 per cent, 175,793 records) were for patients admitted to the critical care unit from the same NHS hospital site.
• A large majority of records identify that patients went elsewhere in the same NHS hospital site upon the end of their critical care period (83.1 per cent, 142,840 records).
• In around 9 per cent of cases, the patient died in the critical care unit.


Clinical Analysis
• 'Cardiac surgery and primary cardiac conditions' was the most commonly identified Healthcare Resource Group (HRG), accounting for 24.3 per cent of male and 13.8 per cent of female records.
• On average, the equivalent of 9 days-worth of organ support was recorded per critical care period.
• More critical care records had 2 types of organ support recorded than any other number of support types (32.1 per cent of records).


Critical Care Unit
• 62.2 per cent (161,007) of ACC records were for care units for 'Non-specific general adult care predominate', and 16.2 per cent (41,970 records) were for units where cardiac surgical adult patients predominate.

Resources

Last edited: 20 July 2018 4:27 pm