This indicator is designed to accompany the SHMI publication.
The SHMI includes all deaths reported of patients who were admitted to non-specialist acute trusts in England and either died while in hospital or within 30 days of discharge. Deaths related to COVID-19 are excluded from the SHMI.
A contextual indicator on the percentage of deaths reported in the SHMI which occurred in hospital and the percentage which occurred outside of hospital is produced to support the interpretation of the SHMI.
Notes:
1. 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. Activity that is being coded as COVID-19, and therefore excluded, is monitored in the contextual indicator 'Percentage of provider spells with COVID-19 coding' which is part of this publication.
2. Please note that 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. Further information is available in the contextual indicator ‘Provider spells compared to the pre-pandemic period’ which is part of this publication.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.