These indicators are designed to accompany the SHMI publication.
As of the July 2020 publication, COVID-19 activity has been excluded from the SHMI. The SHMI is not designed for this type of pandemic activity and the statistical modelling used to calculate the SHMI may not be as robust if such activity were included.
There has been a fall in the number of spells for some trusts due to COVID-19 impacting on activity from March 2020 onwards and this appears to be an accurate reflection of hospital activity rather than a case of missing data.
Contextual indicators on the number of provider spells which are excluded from the SHMI due to them being related to COVID-19 and on the number of provider spells as a percentage of pre-pandemic activity (January 2019 – December 2019) are produced to support the interpretation of the SHMI.
These indicators are being published as experimental statistics. Experimental statistics are official statistics which are published in order to involve users and stakeholders in their development and as a means to build in quality at an early stage.
Notes:
1. There is a shortfall in the number of records for Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust (trust code RDU) and Tameside and Glossop Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust (trust code RMP). Values for these trusts are based on incomplete data and should therefore be interpreted with caution.
2. A number of trusts are currently engaging in a pilot to submit Same Day Emergency Care (SDEC) data to the Emergency Care Data Set (ECDS), rather than the Admitted Patient Care (APC) dataset. As the SHMI is calculated using APC data, this does have the potential to impact on the SHMI value for these trusts. Trusts with SDEC activity removed from the APC data have generally seen an increase in the SHMI value. This is because the observed number of deaths remains approximately the same as the mortality rate for this cohort is very low; secondly, the expected number of deaths decreases because a large number of spells are removed, all of which would have had a small, non-zero risk of mortality contributing to the expected number of deaths. We are working to better understand the planned changes to the recording of SDEC activity and the potential impact on the SHMI. The trusts affected in this publication are: Barts Health NHS Trust (trust code R1H), Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (trust code RGT), Croydon Health Services NHS Trust (trust code RJ6), Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust (trust code RVR), Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust (trust code RDU), Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust (trust code RYJ), Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust (trust code R0A), Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (trust code RM1), and University Hospitals of Derby and Burton NHS Foundation Trust (trust code RTG).
3. Further information on data quality can be found in the SHMI background quality report, which can be downloaded from the 'Resources' section of the publication page.