Skip to main content

Hospitals: Greater London

Volume 467: debated on Monday 19 November 2007

To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many patients were admitted to hospitals in the Greater London area in each of the last 10 years for which figures are available. (164054)

Information on the number of finished admission episodes for the London strategic health authority area for each of the last 10 years can be found in the following table.

Count of finished admission episodes where the strategic health authority of treatment was the five London SHA's: Data for national health service hospitals, England, 1996-97 to 2005-06Data yearFinished admission episodes2005-061,919,6952004-051,804,2912003-041,735,1122002-031,638,3532001-021,536,4452000-011,507,2491999-20001,526,9841998-991,155,2401997-981,092,0641996-971,065,336 Notes: 1. Primary care trust (PCT) and strategic health authority (SHA) data quality. PCT and SHA data was added to historic data-years in the HES database using 2002-03 boundaries, as a one-off exercise in 2004. The quality of the data on PCT of treatment and SHA of treatment is poor in 1996-97, 1997-98 and 1998-99, with over a third of all finished episodes having missing values in these years. Data quality of PCT of GP practice and SHA of GP practice in 1997-98 and 1998-99 is also poor, with a high proportion missing values where practices changed or ceased to exist. There is less change in completeness of the residence-based fields over time, where the majority of unknown values are due to missing postcodes on birth episodes. Users of time series analysis including these years need to be aware of these issues in their interpretation of the data. The SHA's used to define ‘Greater London’ were: Q04 North West London Strategic HA Q05 North Central London Strategic HA Q06 North East London Strategic HA Q07 South East London Strategic HA Q08 South West London Strategic HA 2. Ungrossed Data Figures have not been adjusted for shortfalls in data (i.e. the data are ungrossed). 3. Assessing growth through time HES figures are available from 1989-90 onwards. During the years that these records have been collected by the NHS there have been ongoing improvements in quality and coverage. These improvements in information submitted by the NHS have been particularly marked in the earlier years and need to be borne in mind when analysing time series. Changes in NHS practice also need to be borne in mind when analysing time series. For example a number of procedures may now be undertaken in outpatient settings and may no longer be accounted in the HES data. This may account for any reductions in activity over time. 4. Finished admission episodes A finished admission episode is the first period of in-patient care under one consultant within one health care provider. Please note that admissions do not represent the number of in-patients, as a person may have more than one admission within the year. Source: Hospital Episode Statistics (HES), The Information Centre for Health & Social Care