This is the latest statistical publication of linked HES (Hospital Episode Statistics) and DID (Diagnostic Imaging Dataset) 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 either data set for the period April 2015-November 2015 only. For DID this is provisional 2015/16 data. For HES this is provisional 2015/16 data.
The linkage used for this publication was created on 17 March 2016 and released together with this publication on 08 April 2016.