Adult critical care data

This is the second publication of adult critical care data, which forms part of Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) and is collected as part of the Critical Care Minimum Data Set (CCMDS). It covers critical care periods ending between 1 April 2025 and 31 March 2010, and draws on records submitted by providers as an attachment to the inpatient record.

During the period covered by this report, not all NHS trusts with a critical care capacity have completed data submissions, so data quality and coverage is variable in some cases. Publishing the HES critical care data as experimental statistics allows for discussion, analysis and promotion of the dataset, which in turn should lead to improved coverage and data quality.

Key messages

• Critical care data was supplied by 137 providers, compared to 161 reporting critical care capacities through Department of Health central returns in 2009-10¹. In 2008-09 128 providers submitted critical care data.
• The full adult critical care dataset contained 201,245 critical care records ending in the year 2009-10. Of these, 169,176 were able to be used for analysis having limited the data to overcome data quality issues. This is an increase of 28.0% (37,022 useable records) compared to 2008-09.
• 58.0% (98,065) of the analysed records related to male patients and 42.0% (71,097) to female². These percentages are unchanged when comparing 2008-09 to 2009-10.
• The greatest number of critical care records were recorded for patients between the ages of 70 and 74, making up 13.2% (22,270) of the records analysed (13.0%, 17,214 records in 2008-09).
• On average, weekdays had a greater number of critical care admissions per day than weekends. Weekdays accounted for 82.6% (82.3% in 2008-09) of all admissions.

Footnotes

1. Two providers that supplied critical care data were not included in the Department of Health central return.

2. There were 14 records where gender was not recorded.

Adult Critical Care data is also available for 2008-09 in the below downloadable files.

Responsible statistician

The responsible statistician for this publication is Simon Rhea, HES/SUS Development - Section Head ([email protected], 0845 300 6016).

Copyright statement

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