This is the latest statistical publication of linked HES (Hospital Episode Statistics) and DID (Diagnostic Imaging Data set) data held by the Health and Social Care Information Centre. The HES-DID linkage provides the ability to undertake national (within England) analysis along acute patient pathways to understand typical imaging requirements for given procedures, and/or the outcomes after particular imaging has been undertaken, thereby enabling a much deeper understanding of outcomes of imaging and to allow assessment of variation in practice.
This publication aims to highlight to users the availability of this updated linkage and provide users of the data with some standard information to assess their analysis approach against.
The two data sets have been linked using specific patient identifiers collected in HES and DID. The linkage allows the data sets to be linked from April 2012 when the DID data was first collected; however this report focuses on patients who were present in the either data set in the period 01 April 2014 to 31 October 2014 only. For DID this is Provisional April 2014 to October 2014 data. For HES this is Provisional April 2014 to October 2014 data.
The linkage used for this publication was created on 13 February 2015 and released together with this publication on 6 March 2015. The linkage utilises all historic HES patient identifying data up to 31 Jan 2015 and all patient identifying DID data submitted prior to 30 Jan 2015