These indicators are designed to accompany the SHMI publication.
As of the July 2020 publication, COVID-19 activity has been excluded from the SHMI. The SHMI is not designed for this type of pandemic activity and the statistical modelling used to calculate the SHMI may not be as robust if such activity were included.
There has been a fall in the number of spells for most trusts due to COVID-19 impacting on activity from March 2020 onwards and this appears to be an accurate reflection of hospital activity rather than a case of missing data.
Contextual indicators on the number of provider spells which are excluded from the SHMI due to them being related to COVID-19 and on the number of provider spells as a percentage of pre-pandemic activity (January 2019 – December 2019) are produced to support the interpretation of the SHMI.
These indicators are being published as experimental statistics. Experimental statistics are official statistics which are published in order to involve users and stakeholders in their development and as a means to build in quality at an early stage.
Notes:
1. The data for St Helens and Knowsley Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust (trust code RBN) has incomplete information on secondary conditions that the patients suffers from, and this will have affected the calculation of this indicator. Values for this trust should therefore be interpreted with caution.
2. Day cases and regular day attenders are excluded from the SHMI. However, some day cases for University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (trust code RRV) have been incorrectly classified as ordinary admissions meaning that they have been included in the SHMI. Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust (trust code RWF) has submitted a number of records with a patient classification of ‘day case’ or ‘regular day attender’ and an intended management value of ‘patient to stay in hospital for at least one night’. This mismatch has resulted in the patient classification being updated to ‘ordinary admission’ by the HES data cleaning rules. This may have resulted in the number of ordinary admissions being overstated. The trust has been contacted to clarify what the correct patient classification is for these records. Values for these trusts should therefore be interpreted with caution.
3. There is a shortfall in the number of records for Mid Cheshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (trust code RBT) and The Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust (trust code RQW), meaning that values for these trusts are based on incomplete data and should therefore be interpreted with caution.
4. We recommend that values for Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust (trust code RJ1) are interpreted with caution as there is a possible shortfall in the number of records which is currently under investigation.
5. On 1 April 2021 Western Sussex Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (trust code RYR) merged with Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust (trust code RXH). The new trust is called University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust (trust code RYR). This new organisation structure is reflected from this publication onwards.
6. Further information on data quality can be found in the SHMI background quality report, which can be downloaded from the 'Resources' section of the publication page.