Adult Critical Care Data in England - April 2013 to March 2014

In 2013-14:

Critical Care Periods
• There were 249,735 records of Adult Critical Care (ACC) periods usable for analysis, an increase of 5.1 per cent on the 237,710 records usable for analysis in 2012-13
• Nearly twice as many critical care periods were recorded as starting on each weekday (between 15.0 per cent and 17.1 per cent) as on a Saturday (9.3 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 (7.9 per cent of all recorded start times).

Critical Care Patients
• The majority of critical care records were for male patients (56.8 per cent, 141,814 records)
• Nearly all records (95.4 per cent, 172,822 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 (83.0 per cent, 142,913 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 23.5 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 (31.3 per cent of records).

Critical Care Units
• 62.2 per cent (155,294) of ACC records were for care units for 'Non-specific general adult care predominate', and 15.4 per cent (38,477 records) were for units where cardiac surgical patients predominate.