NHS organisations differ widely in the populations they serve and so data which does not take this into account can be misleading.
For CCG, STP, Region and national data the number of resident patients has been used to take account of the size of population served. The smallest CCG has a population less than 65,000. Larger CCGs have populations of over 850,000.
For hospital Trusts data the number of FCE days of hospital care for the time period under consideration (taken from the Hospital Episode Statistics data) has been used to standardise the data. The values vary significantly, with more specialist hospitals, for example, the Royal National Hospital for Rheumatic Diseases NHS Foundation Trust reporting fewer than 10,000 days of hospital care per year, whereas larger Trusts such as Bart’s Health NHS Trust report over 800,000 days of hospital care per year.
Trust level data should not be compared with the national, Region or CCG data.
This scorecard covers some highly specialised medicines and technologies so differences in use across organisations are to be expected.
Medicines presented as grouped medicines are also standardised either by resident populations, FCE days of hosiptal care or by national registers i.e. QOF. Further details can be found in the grouped medicines methodology specification document.