Adult Critical Care Data in England - April 2012 to March 2013

In 2012-13:

Critical Care Periods

• There were 237,710 records of adult critical care periods usable for analysis, a slight decrease on the 238,248 records usable for analysis in 2011-12.

• Nearly twice as many critical care periods were recorded as starting on each weekday (between 15.0 per cent and 17.2 per cent per day) as on a Saturday (9.1 per cent) or Sunday (8.5 per cent)

• More critical care periods were recorded as starting between 18:00-18:59 than any other hour in the day (8.1 per cent of all recorded start times).

Critical Care Patients

• The majority of critical care records were for male patients [57.4 per cent (136,367) of records where gender was recorded].
• Nearly all records where the information is available - 94.9 per cent (170,020) - recorded the patient as having been admitted to the critical care unit from the same NHS hospital site as the critical care unit.
• A large majority of records identify that patients went elsewhere in the same NHS hospital site upon the end of their critical care period [83.3 per cent (144,336) of records with the information recorded].
• 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 Healthcare Resource Group chapter identified in more records than any other, accounting for 24.7 per cent of male and 14.7 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 (31.2 per cent of the records).

Critical Care Units

• 62.2 per cent (147,928) of adult critical care records were for care units for non-specific general adult care, and 16.6 per cent (39,500) were for units where cardiac surgical patients predominate.