Virendra Sharma – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Virendra Sharma on 2014-07-15.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what data his Department gathers on the number of patients with diabetes who are admitted to hospital each month as a result of a hypoglycaemic episode; and what estimate has been made of the overall cost of hypoglycaemia to the NHS.

Jane Ellison

Providers of NHS services in England are required to supply information on activity to the Secondary Uses Services (SUS) database via commissioning datasets. Each month an extract from the SUS database is taken and populated into the Hospital Episode Statistics database which is then made available for analysis.

Diseases are classified using the World Health Organization International Classification of Diseases. Codes to identify diabetes and hypoglycaemia exist, so it is possible to report activity on admissions to hospital for patients with a primary diagnosis of hypoglycaemia and a secondary diagnosis of diabetes.

NHS England has not made an estimate of the overall cost of hypoglycaemia to the National Health Service.