Hospital Statistics

Hospital Information Branch is responsible for the collection, quality assurance, analysis and publication of timely and accurate information derived from a wide range of statistical information returns supplied by the Health and Social Care (HSC) Trusts and the HSC Board.  Statistical information is collected routinely from a variety of electronic patient level administrative system and pre-defined EXCEL survey return templates.

The Branch aims to present information in a meaningful way and provide advice on its uses to customers in the Health Committee, Professional Advisory Groups, policy branches within the DHSSPS, other Health organisations, academia, private sector organisations as well as the general public.

The statistical information collected is used to contribute to major exercises such as reporting on the performance of the HSC system, other comparative performance exercises, target setting and monitoring, development of service frameworks as well as policy formulation and evaluation.  In addition, the information is used in response to a significantly high volume of Parliamentary / Assembly questions and ad-hoc queries each year.

Official Statistics produced by Hospital Information Branch include:

Data relates to all inpatient and day case activity in hospitals in Northern Ireland including the number of inpatient, day cases, available beds, occupied beds, occupancy rates, average length of stay, theatre utilisation and hospital births.  Data is available at hospital level and by specialty.  

Details of specific operations and diagnosis are available from the episode based activity data.

Data relates to consultant-led outpatient services within HSC hospital in Northern Ireland including number of attendances and missed/cancelled appointments.  Data is available at hospital level and by specialty.

Data relates to all attendances at A&E departments in Northern Ireland including the number of new and review attendances, type of department attended, patient transport and emergency response.  Data is available at hospital level.

Data relates to all mental health and learning disability activity in hospitals in Northern Ireland including inpatients, day cases, consultant-led outpatients, compulsory admissions under the Mental Health (NI) Order 1986 and annual census data on the number of inpatients resident in mental health and learning disability hospitals.  Data is available at hospital level and by specialty.

Data relates to the length of time patients wait for consultant-led outpatient, ICATS, diagnostic, inpatient, cancer and emergency care services in Northern Ireland.  Data is available at various levels depending on the topic covered but at a minimum is available at Trust level and by length of wait.

Data relates to complaints received by HSC Trusts in Northern Ireland, the time taken to provide a substantive response, clinical/social care negligence cases by specialty and nature of incident and the amount of damages and legal costs paid. Data is available at Trust level.

Report of findings on the HIB Customer Survey 2010/11 (PDF 275KB).