Notes:

1. The high proportion of deliveries with an unknown length of gestation recorded needs to be taken into account when interpreting the rates of deliveries for each gestation group.

2. Length of gestation: This field shows the number of completed weeks of gestation according to the World Health Organisation definition, which specifies time from the first day of the last menstrual period. If this date is not reliable, an estimate is provided. This item appears for each baby on multiple birth delivery records; 0-36 weeks premature birth; 37+ weeks (includes post term births); and unknown.

3. Finished consultant episode (FCE): An FCE is defined as a continuous period of admitted patient care under one consultant within one health care provider. FCEs are counted against the year in which they end. However, the figures do not represent the number of different patients, as a person may have more than one episode of care within the same stay in hospital or in different stays in the same year. Maternity events taking place in either NHS hospitals or in non-NHS hospitals funded by the NHS will be recorded as ordinary ‘delivery’ or ‘birth’ episodes. ‘Other delivery events’ are delivery events other than those resulting in delivery or birth episodes under NHS funding or in any other facility supplied under a service agreement with the NHS.

4. Ungrossed data: Figures have not been adjusted for shortfalls in data (i.e. the data are ungrossed).

5. Data quality: HES are compiled from data sent by more than 300 NHS trusts and primary care trusts (PCTs) in England. Data are also received from a number of independent sector organisations for activity commissioned by the English NHS. The Information Centre for health and social care liaises closely with these organisations to encourage submission of complete and valid data and seeks to minimise inaccuracies and the effect of missing and invalid data via HES processes. While this brings about improvement over time, some shortcomings remain.

6. Hospital providers: A provider code is a unique code that identifies an organisation acting as a health care provider (e.g. NHS trust or PCT). Hospital providers can also include treatment centres (TC). TCs (also known as diagnostic centres) provide elective (planned) surgery for a range of conditions, mainly for day surgery or short-term hospital stay patients. Some TCs are attached to hospital trusts and HES enables data for these to be separately identified from the rest of the health care provider’s data. It does this by adding TC to the trust code; if there is more than one per trust, ‘T1’, ‘T2’, ‘T3’ etc. are suggested unless already in use by the trust. Activity performed in the remainder of the trust is identified by the health care provider code being followed by an ‘X’. Source:

Hospital Episode Statistics (HES), the NHS Information Centre for Health and Social Care.