Hospital In-Patient data – Patient Episode Database for Wales (PEDW)

Admissions to hospital for the treatment of injuries are captured in the Patient Episode Database for Wales (PEDW) held at Health Solutions Wales. Records in PEDW are based on episodes of care under a particular consultant, called Finished Consultant Episodes. These need to be linked together to carry out analyses of the number of people admitted/discharged from hospital, how many had particular treatments, and whether they died in hospital. Variations in the level of coding of diagnoses and external cause coding (what caused the injury e.g. fall) over years and between hospitals can affect the results. There are considerable variations in the proportion of injuries admitted to different hospitals with the same ICD code, as the ICD system does not measure the severity of injury and admission to hospital is dependent on a variety of factors, including distance from home, ability to cope if living alone, bed availability, and surgeons’ propensities to operate on certain injuries rather than treat them in an outpatient setting e.g. fracture management. Hip fractures are a notable exception with virtually all patients being admitted. Each record in PEDW has space for up to 14 diagnoses and 12 procedures. Over the years the most important diagnosis or procedure has not always been coded in the first position. Thus, analyses of a particular diagnosis or procedure based on the first position will often produce a different result than one based on ‘any mention of ’. Because of difference in coding practices between hospitals the use of the first position only can produce artificial geographical variations as most people are treated by their local hospital. PEDW data are held at Brunel House and anonymised records are made available to The National Public Health Service for Wales for analysis.

Hospital admission rates from injury by local authority area in Wales, 1999 - 2003 (xls file)

Hospital admissions by 5 year age groups and local authority area for all injuries in Wales, 1999 - 2003 (xls file)

Hospital admissions by 5 year age groups and local authority area for unintentional injuries in Wales, 1999 - 2003 (xls file)

Hospital admissions by 5 year age groups and local authority area for intentional self harm injuries in Wales, 1999 - 2003 (xls file)

Hospital admissions by 5 year age groups and local authority area for assault injuries in Wales, 1999 - 2003 (xls file)