Alcohol dependence data collection

Frequency: monthly.

The Alcohol Dependence programme is collecting patient level data specifically to monitor activity and impact of Alcohol Care Teams in hospitals, especially in terms of clinical outcomes and the impact on reducing health inequalities. 

This is a new and unique collection, the new collection will ensure the NHS can demonstrate delivery of the alcohol Long Term Plan commitments, report to the DHSC in line with expectations for patient level reporting and have data available to underpin service improvement.

The data collected will also support the NHIR evaluation of the cost-effectiveness of Alcohol Care Teams (ACTs). It will therefore act as part of the policy lever for the roll out of optimal ACTs to all non-specialist acute hospitals, not just the 25% with the most harm. It will also support the case for sustainability of these essential services that seek to address widening health inequalities in an already disadvantaged group.

The data collected will be used to:                                                              

• analyse quantitative metrics and assess progress across each of the sites, providing insights and recommendations
• provide regular cross-site reporting to the national team, to provide assurance and help identify good practice to enable replicability

Acute trusts will be required to submit data one month in arrears. The collection will open at 8am on the 2nd working day of each month. The collection will close at 5pm on the 15th working day of the month. Registered data submitters of the data collection will receive monthly emails from Strategic Data Collection Service (SDCS) confirming when the reporting window is opening and closing.

Where there are multiple trusts as part of an EIS, ICSs should submit one return per trust. It is local preference if the data is submitted straight from trusts or by the ICS. If submitted by the ICS, we would need a trust identifier, but it is not necessary for it to come from the ICS. Trust and hospital site codes should be input in the relevant section of the submission template. Each Trust with an ACT should make a submission.  Where there are ACTs on multiple sites within the same trust the data can be submitted on one return and the hospital site code field used to identify the data from each site. Data should be submitted once during each reporting period.