Hospital admissions for serious accidental injury, with a length of stay exceeding 3 days (ICD-10 primary diagnosis in the range S00 through T98X and external cause code in the following ranges: V01-V99, W00-X59, Y40-Y84), standardised for the age and sex characteristics of the population and expressed as a rate per 100,000 population. The primary diagnosis field in Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) records information about the patient’s disease or condition and the codes are defined in the International Statistical Classification of Diseases, Injuries and Causes of Death (ICD-10). Where applicable, the external cause field in HES records the environmental events and circumstances as the cause of injury, poisoning and other adverse effects. Comparison of crude episode rates between areas which may have different age structures would be inappropriate, because the age structure of the population can affect the number of episodes and thereby the crude episode rate. To overcome this problem, the common approach is to adjust or standardise the episode rates to take account of differences between the age structure of the populations. The directly age standardised episode rate is the rate of episodes that would occur in a standard population (in this case the European Standard Population) if that population were to experience the age-specific rates of the subject population (in this case individual local authority populations). The same standard population is used for males, females and persons. This means that rates can be compared across genders but also that rates for persons are standardised for age only and not for sex.
This indicator relates to the Our Healthier Nation strategy target to reduce serious accidental injury. The target is monitored by the directly age-standardised episode rate for accidents for persons of all ages. The target is a 10% reduction by the year 2010 from the baseline rate in 1995/96. The strategy particularly identified that accidents are the greatest single threat to life for children and young people, and children up to the age of 15 years from unskilled families are five times more likely to die from accidental injury than those from professional families and falls are a major cause of death and disability for older people (3,000 people aged 65 and over die each year). Accidental injury is a leading cause of death and disability – the World Health Organization suggests that by 2020 injury will account for the largest single reason for loss of healthy human life-years. In the UK non-fatal injury results in 720,000 people being admitted to hospital a year and more than six million visits to accident and emergency departments. It is estimated that in the UK disability from injury is responsible for a considerably greater burden of potential healthy life-years lost than from cancer, or heart disease and stroke.
This indicator has been discontinued and so there will be no further updates.
Legacy unique identifier: P01059