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

Summary Hospital-level Mortality Indicator (SHMI) - Deaths associated with hospitalisation, England, October 2016 - September 2017

National statistics, Official statistics, Open data, Experimental statistics

Publication Date:: 22 Mar 2018
Geographic Coverage:: England
Geographical Granularity:: NHS Trusts
Date Range:: 01 Oct 2016 to 30 Sep 2017

Summary

This publication of the SHMI relates to discharges in the reporting period October 2016 to September 2017.

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 than expected number of deaths should not immediately be interpreted as indicating poor performance and instead should be viewed as a 'smoke alarm' which requires further investigation. Similarly, an 'as expected' or 'lower than expected' SHMI should not immediately be interpreted as indicating satisfactory or good performance.

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