Dan Neville
Question:118 Mr. Neville asked the Minister for Health and Children the information which is collated under hospital in-patient inquiry data. [7265/01]
Written Answers. - Hospital Data.
The hospital in-patient enquiry – HIPE – system collects a range of information on each discharge from publicly-funded acute hospitals. The system extends to 62 hospitals, includes data on both day cases and inpatients and data are submitted in electronic format on a monthly basis to the Economic and Social Research Institute which has administrative responsibility for HIPE.
Data items cover information on the patient, on the source of admission, on diagnoses and procedures, on length of stay in hospital, on patient status and on discharge destination. Patient items include age, sex, marital status and area of residence. Personal identification information is not recorded on HIPE. Source of admission refers to types of elective and emergency admissions and transfers from other hospitals. There is provision on the HIPE record for including up to six separate diagnoses and up to four procedures. These are coded using the ninth version of the International Classification of Diseases, Clinical Modification – ICD-9-CM. Consultant codes are also included in an encrypted format. Patient status refers to the public versus private status of the patient and medical card numbers are recorded where relevant. Discharge destination covers normal discharge to home, transfers to other hospitals or convalescent homes and hospital deaths.
The HIPE data set is also used for the purposes of casemix analysis. This involves the addition of two data items to each discharge record. The first is the diagnosis related group, DRG, to which the patient has been assigned. There are approximately 500 different DRGs and each discharge is assigned to one and only one of these. The second is a data item referring to the major diagnostic category, or MDC. DRGs are grouped into MDCs of which there are approximately 30.