Dan Jarvis – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Dan Jarvis on 2015-10-29.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what estimate he has made of the number of cases of hypothermia diagnosed in (a) Barnsley Central constituency, (b) Yorkshire and Humber and (c) the UK in each year since May 2010.

Jane Ellison

The table below sets out the count of finished admission episodes (FAEs)¹ with a primary diagnosis² of hypothermia³ in Barnsley Central constituency⁴, North Yorkshire and Humber, West Yorkshire, and South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw Area Teams of residence⁵ and England for years 2010-11 to 2013-14⁶

Activity in English NHS Hospitals and English NHS commissioned activity in the independent sector

	2010-11	2011-12	2012-13	2013-14
Barnsley Central constituency	*	*	*	*
North Yorkshire & Humber Area Team of Residence	53	60	61	73
South Yorkshire & Bassetlaw Area Team of Residence	33	50	36	55
West Yorkshire Area Team of Residence	73	78	76	78
England	3,390	3,406	3,942	3,837

Source: Hospital Episode Statistics (HES), Health and Social Care Information Centre

Notes:

1. Finished admission episode

A finished admission episode (FAE) is the first period of inpatient care under one consultant within one healthcare provider. FAEs are counted against the year or month in which the admission episode finishes. Admissions do not represent the number of inpatients, as a person may have more than one admission within the period.

2. Primary diagnosis

The primary diagnosis is the first of up to 20 (14 from 2002-03 to 2006-07 and 7 prior to 2002-03) diagnosis fields in the Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) data set and provides the main reason why the patient was admitted to hospital.

3. ICD-10 Codes

The following ICD-10 codes were used to identify hypothermia:

T68.X Hypothermia

R68.0 Hypothermia, not associated with low environmental temperature

P80.- Hypothermia of newborn

4. Parliamentary constituency of residence

The parliamentary constituency containing the patient’s normal home address. This does not necessarily reflect where the patient was treated as they may have travelled to another parliamentary constituency for treatment. This field is only available from 2009-10 onwards.

5. Area Team of residence

The area team containing the patient’s normal home address. This does not necessarily reflect where the patient was treated as they may have travelled to another area for treatment.

6. Assessing growth through time (Inpatients)

HES figures are available from 1989-90 onwards. Changes to the figures over time need to be interpreted in the context of improvements in data quality and coverage (particularly in earlier years), improvements in coverage of independent sector activity (particularly from 2006-07) and changes in NHS practice. For example, changes in activity may be due to changes in the provision of care.

7. Small numbers

To protect patient confidentiality, figures between 1 and 5 have been replaced with “*” (an asterisk). Where it was still possible to identify figures from the total, additional figures have been replaced with "*". Where the symbol "-" (dash) appears this represents the absence of data.

Note that HES disclosure control rules only apply to ‘known’ values, e.g. small numbers where the age is unknown do not need to be replaced with "*".