Hospital admission values
Posted in News, Publications
Rx info provide the ability to use denominators within Define and Refine to allow quick and meaningful benchmarking of data.
We have historically used the Monthly Activity Returns (MAR) data published by NHS England which was discontinued in April 2020 and replaced with Hospital Episode Statistics data (HES). Both values report on the admission numbers for ‘Specific Acute Specialties’ also known as ‘General & Acute specialties’ – a subset of the overall admission values that emphasises hospital activity and excludes specialties associated with obstetrics and child birth.
HES data is published by NHS Digital around the middle of each month and contains a 12-month rolling data set which is 6 weeks in arrears (May 2021 publication contains April 2020 to March 2021). Each publication is an update and may affect any previous monthly values.
When admission data has not yet been published Rx info use a rolling system whereby the last known month will be rolled forward for example if the last published HES value is for March, this value will be rolled forward up to the present month.
Usually this has little impact on the reports as the variation between months is typically small however with the COVID pandemic we are seeing activity grow exponentially and large differences between monthly figures are causing some variation in reporting.
We would recommend that any trust running reports using an admissions denominator be aware that the admission value may be provisional and check they are familiar with the data by using the ‘Data Quality’ link on Define and Refine and then ‘Beds and Activity Figures’.
For any questions please feel free to contact us at [email protected]