Trends in ENT admission rates

Admission rates for ear, nose and throat (ENT) services can vary greatly between primary care trust (PCT) areas. The difference can be so great that it means that some PCTs may be paying up to �0.5 million more a year on additional procedures than those with average rates.

Access to ENT hospital admission rates and trends

To make it easy for trusts to assess and question their ENT hospital admission rates, the Inter-Authority Comparisons and Consultancy (IACC) unit at the University of Birmingham has calculated ENT access rates.

The rates, which are age and sex standardised for each PCT and strategic health authority (SHA) are available for:

• ENT as a whole
• the ten most frequent healthcare resource groups (HRGs) - covering more than 80 per cent of total finished consultant episodes (FCEs)
• the ten most frequent main operations - covering more than 60 per cent of all operations.

The IACC has also calculated national trends for particular ENT operations carried out since 1989.

SHAs and PCTs can use these access rates and trends to see their own position against national distributions.

Trends in admission rates across England

The national trends data from the IACC show, for example, that the annual number of tonsillectomies in England has reduced by about a third since 1995-96 (see below).

They also show that there have been reductions in the numbers of some operations being performed, and increases in others. For example, the number of tonsillectomy and grommet operations has reduced, although there were still 52,000 and 36,000 of these respectively in England in 2003-04.

The calculated admission rates show that some PCTs have overall admission rates for ENT services that are nearly double the national average and up to five times higher than the lowest rates in England.

Further information

For detailed information about ENT admissions by PCT and SHA, and for further information, contact Mike Harley, Bob Jayes or Sue Elias at the IACC (E-mail: [email protected], Tel: 0121 414 7066) or visit the IACC website.