(2) how many patients were admitted to hospital as a consequence of (a) alcoholic liver disease and (b) cirrhosis of the liver in each of the last 10 years.
Data on the number of patients admitted for alcoholic liver disease and cirrhosis of the liver for the last 10 years to each hospital in the East of England are not available. However, the following tables provide the number of admissions to hospital for alcoholic liver disease and cirrhosis of the liver for the last 10 years in England and for each hospital provider for the East of England strategic health authority.
When considering this data, it is important to note the following:
that data for 2008-09 is provisional;
to protect patient confidentiality, figures between 1 and 5 have been suppressed and replaced with “*” (an asterisk) and where it was possible to identify numbers from the total due to a single suppressed number in a row or column, an additional number (the next smallest) has been also been suppressed;
that admissions do not represent the number of in-patients, as a person may have more than one admission within the year; and
K70, the ICD-10 code for alcoholic liver disease, was used to identify admissions due to alcoholic liver disease, while K70.3, K71.7, K74.3-K74.6 and A52.7 with K77.0 were the ICD-10 codes used to identify admissions due to cirrhosis of the liver.
Table 1: Number of finished admission episodes for alcoholic liver disease and cirrhosis of the liver for 1999-2000 to 2008-09 for each hospital provider for the East of England strategic health authority has been placed in the Library.
Admission for alcoholic liver disease Admission for cirrhosis of the liver 2008-091 14,239 8,773 2007-08 14,461 8,549 2006-07 14,668 8,511 2005-06 13,930 7,834 2004-05 13,201 6,979 2003-04 12,336 6,482 2002-03 11,560 6,056 2001-02 10,802 5,859 2000-01 10,311 5,655 1999-2000 10,098 5,716 1 Provisional data. Notes: 1. Finished admission episodes: A finished admission episode is the first period of in-patient care under one consultant within one health care provider. Finished admission episodes are counted against the year in which the admission episode finishes. Please note that admissions do not represent the number of in-patients, as a person may have more than one admission within the year. 2. Primary diagnosis: The primary diagnosis is the first of up to 20 (14 from 2002-03 to 2006-07 and seven 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. Provisional data: The 2008-09 data is provisional and may be incomplete or contain errors for which no adjustments have yet been made. Counts produced from provisional data are likely to be lower than those generated for the same period in the final dataset. This shortfall will be most pronounced in the final month of the latest period i.e. November from the (month 9) April to November extract. It is also probable that clinical data are not complete, which may in particular affect the last two months of any given period. There may also be a variety of errors due to coding inconsistencies that have not yet been investigated and corrected. 4. Secondary diagnosis: As well as the primary diagnosis, there are up to 19 (13 from 2002-03 to 2006-07 and six prior to 2002-03) secondary diagnosis fields in HES that show other diagnoses relevant to the episode of care. 5. Data quality: HES are compiled from data sent by more than 300 NHS trusts and primary care trusts in England. Data is also received from a number of independent sector organisations for activity commissioned by the English NHS. The NHS 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. Assessing growth through time: HES figures are available from 1989-90 onwards. The quality and coverage of the data have improved over time. 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. Some of the increase in figures for later years (particularly 2006-07 onwards) may be due to the improvement in the coverage of independent sector activity. 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 out-patient settings and may no longer be accounted for in the HES data. This may account for any reductions in activity over time. Source: Hospital Episode Statistics (HES), the NHS Information Centre for health and social care.