Publication, Part of Summary Hospital-level Mortality Indicator (SHMI) - Deaths associated with hospitalisation

Summary Hospital-level Mortality Indicator (SHMI) - Deaths associated with hospitalisation, England, January 2016 - December 2016

National statistics, Official statistics, Open data, Experimental statistics

Publication Date:: 22 Jun 2017
Geographic Coverage:: England
Geographical Granularity:: NHS Trusts
Date Range:: 01 Jan 2016 to 31 Dec 2016

Summary

This publication of the SHMI relates to discharges in the reporting period January 2016 to December 2016.

The SHMI is the ratio between the actual number of patients who die following hospitalisation at the trust and the number that would be expected to die on the basis of average England figures, given the characteristics of the patients treated there. It covers patients admitted to hospitals in England who died either while in hospital or within 30 days of being discharged.

To help users of the data understand the SHMI, trusts have been categorised into bandings indicating whether a trust's SHMI is 'higher than expected', 'as expected' or 'lower than expected'. For any given number of expected deaths, a range of observed deaths is considered to be 'as expected'. If the observed number of deaths falls outside of this range, the trust in question is considered to have a higher or lower SHMI than expected.

The SHMI is not a measure of quality of care. A higher/lower than expected number of deaths should not immediately be interpreted as indicating poor/good performance and instead should be viewed as a 'smoke alarm' which requires further investigation.

Further background information and supporting documents, including information on how to interpret the SHMI, are available on the SHMI homepage (see Related Links).