Epilepsy
Health
Valerie Vaz (Walsall South, Labour)
To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many unplanned hospitalisations patients with epilepsy had in (a) 2009, (b) 2010, (c) 2011 and (d) 2012.
Paul Burstow (Minister of State (Care Services), Health; Sutton and Cheam, Liberal Democrat)
The information is shown in the following table.
| Count of finished admission episodes (1) (FAEs) where the patient had a primary diagnosis (2 ) of epilepsy and was admitted as an emergency for the period 2008-09 to 2010-11, (3) and provisional data from April 2011 to January 2012 (4) . | ||||
| April 2011 to January 2012 (4) | 2010-11 | 2009-10 | 2008-09 | |
| FAEs total | 32,483 | 39,126 | 38,335 | 37,679 |
| (1) Finished admission episodes (FAE) A FAE is the first period of in-patient care under one consultant within one health care provider. FAEs are counted against the year in which the admission episode finishes. Admissions do not represent the number of in-patients, as a person may have more than one admission within the year. (2) Primary diagnosisThe primary diagnosis is the first of up to 20 (14 from 2002-03 to 2006-07 and seven prior to 2002-03) diagnosis fields in the Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) data set and provides the main reason why the patient was admitted to hospital. ICD10 codes used: G40: Epilepsy G41: Status Epilepticus. (3) Assessing growth through timeHES figures are available from 1989-90 onwards. Changes to the figures over time need to be interpreted in the context of improvements in data quality and coverage (particularly in earlier years), improvements in coverage of independent sector activity (particularly from 2006-07) and changes in national health service practice. For example, apparent reductions in activity may be due to a number of procedures which may now be undertaken in outpatient settings and so no longer include in admitted patient HES data. (4) Provisional dataThe data are provisional and may be incomplete or contain errors for which no adjustments have yet been made. Counts produced from provisional data are likely to be lower than those generated for the same period in the final dataset. This shortfall will be most pronounced in the final month of the latest period, that is November from the (month nine) April to November extract. It is also probable that clinical data are not complete, which may in particular affect the last two months of any given period. There may also be errors due to coding inconsistencies that have not yet been investigated and corrected. Data qualityHES are compiled from data sent by more than 300 NHS trusts and primary care trusts in England and from some independent sector organisations for activity commissioned by the English NHS. The NHS Information Centre for health and social care liaises closely with these organisations to encourage submission of complete and valid data and seeks to minimise inaccuracies. While this brings about improvement over time, some shortcomings remain. Source: Hospital Episode Statistics (HES), The Health and Social Care Information Centre. | ||||