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 The Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust (trust code RQW). Values for this trust are based on incomplete data and should therefore be interpreted with caution.
2. Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust (trust code RDU) has not submitted data to the Secondary Uses Service (SUS) since June 2022 due to an issue with their patient records system. This is causing a large shortfall in records with data only submitted for 3 months out of the 12 months in the current time period. Values for this trust should be viewed in the context of this issue.
3. There is a high percentage of invalid diagnosis codes for Milton Keynes University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (trust code RD8). Values for this trust should therefore be interpreted with caution.
4. 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) are now submitting Same Day Emergency Care (SDEC) data to the Emergency Care Data Set (ECDS) rather than the Admitted Patient Care (APC) dataset. The SHMI is calculated using APC data. Removal of SDEC activity from the APC data may impact a trust’s SHMI value and may increase it. More information is available in the Background Quality Report.
5. On 1 July 2023 Southport and Ormskirk Hospital NHS Trust (trust code RVY) was acquired by St Helens and Knowsley Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust (trust code RBN). The new organisation is known as Mersey and West Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust (trust code RBN). However, as we received notification of this change after data processing for this publication began, data are still reported for the two separate organisations. NHS England are planning to report data for the new merged organisation from the October 2023 publication.
6. 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.