These indicators are designed to accompany the SHMI publication.
Information on the main condition the patient is in hospital for (the primary diagnosis) is used to calculate the expected number of deaths used in the calculation of the SHMI. A high percentage of records with an invalid primary diagnosis may indicate a data quality problem. A high percentage of records with a primary diagnosis which is a symptom or sign may indicate problems with data quality or timely diagnosis of patients, but may also reflect the case-mix of patients or the service model of the trust (e.g. a high level of admissions to acute admissions wards for assessment and stabilisation).
Contextual indicators on the percentage of provider spells with an invalid primary diagnosis and the percentage of provider spells with a primary diagnosis which is a symptom or sign are produced to support the interpretation of the SHMI.
Notes:
1. There is a shortfall in the number of records for North Middlesex University Hospital NHS Trust (trust code RAP), Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust (trust code RTF), The Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust (trust code RFR), and The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust (trust code RXW). Values for these trusts are based on incomplete data and should therefore be interpreted with caution.
2. A number of trusts are now submitting Same Day Emergency Care (SDEC) data to the Emergency Care Data Set (ECDS) rather than the Admitted Patient Care (APC) dataset. The SHMI is calculated using APC data. Removal of SDEC activity from the APC data may impact a trust’s SHMI value and may increase it. More information about this is available in the Background Quality Report.
3. Further information on data quality can be found in the SHMI background quality report, which can be downloaded from the 'Resources' section of this page.