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Inpatient and Day Case Activity

A patient is termed an inpatient when they occupy a staffed bed in a hospital and either remain overnight (whether intended or not) or are expected to remain overnight but are discharged earlier. An inpatient’s admission can be an emergency, an elective or a transfer. A day case is when a patient makes a planned attendance for one day to a specialty for clinical care and requires the use of a bed (or trolley in lieu of a bed). Although a day case is usually completed on the same day, the patient may need to be admitted as an inpatient if they are not fit to be discharged.

Data and Resources

Additional Info

Field Value
Source Inpatient data is sourced from SMR01
Author Secondary Care Team
Last Updated February 25, 2025, 13:50 (GMT)
Created November 5, 2019, 10:44 (GMT)
Contact Address Public Health Scotland, Gyle Square, 1 South Gyle Crescent, Edinburgh, EH12 9EB
Subject Hospital Care
Frequency Quarterly
Time frame of data and timeliness Data from the quarter ending 30 September 2019 to the quarter ending 30 September 2024
Coverage Covers all NHS Boards in Scotland.
Completeness For details of the completeness of SMR01, see https://www.opendata.nhs.scot/dataset/scottish-morbidity-record-completeness
Accuracy https://www.opendata.nhs.scot/dataset/inpatient-and-daycase-activity/resource/a15a1878-3203-4506-90ac-586bd672545d
Continuity of data "There are known issues with the quality of data presented. For more information, please see the ‘Continuity and accuracy of data’ section of the official data release information. https://www.publichealthscotland.scot/publications/acute-hospital-activity-and-nhs-beds-information-quarterly/acute-hospital-activity-and-nhs-beds-information-quarterly-quarter-ending-30-september-2024/official-data-release-information/ The quarterly publication should not be used to approximate yearly figures as NHS Boards can update and submit their data monthly, which may result in changes in the recent data shown from one publication to another. This means that there will likely be more variation in the quarterly data which would level off over the year when presenting annual data within the annual publication. Also, it should be noted that the quarterly publication includes acute hospitals only. In addition, only acute specialties are included in the inpatient and day case figures."
Concepts and definitions "https://www.publichealthscotland.scot/publications/acute-hospital-activity-and-nhs-beds-information-quarterly/acute-hospital-activity-and-nhs-beds-information-quarterly-quarter-ending-30-september-2024/methods-used-to-produce-this-data-release/ https://publichealthscotland.scot/publications/acute-hospital-activity-and-nhs-beds-information-quarterly/acute-hospital-activity-and-nhs-beds-information-quarterly-quarter-ending-30-september-2024/glossary/ Further details are also available in the PHS Data Dictionary: https://www.publichealthscotland.scot/resources-and-tools/health-intelligence-and-data-management/national-data-catalogue/data-dictionary/search-the-data-dictionary/. For detailed information on the data sources and clinical coding used within Hospital Care analysis, please refer to the SMR Datasets, ISD(S)1 data collection and Terminology Services web pages: https://www.publichealthscotland.scot/resources-and-tools/health-intelligence-and-data-management/data-management-in-secondary-care-hospital-activity/scottish-morbidity-records-smr/what-are-the-smr-datasets/ https://www.publichealthscotland.scot/resources-and-tools/health-intelligence-and-data-management/data-management-in-secondary-care-hospital-activity/isd-s-1-hospital-activity/what-is-isd-s-1/ https://www.publichealthscotland.scot/resources-and-tools/health-intelligence-and-data-management/terminology-services-and-clinical-coding/"
Disclosure Disclosure control methods have been applied to the data in order to protect patient confidentiality. Therefore, some figures may not be additive. The PHS Statistical Disclosure Protocol is followed. https://publichealthscotland.scot/publications/public-health-scotland-statistical-disclosure-protocol/public-health-scotland-statistical-disclosure-protocol-version-22/
Revision statement All revisions to data within this release are planned and are due to incomplete data returns at the time of publication. In general, these revisions have minimal effect on the statistics. If data providers discover that data submitted for publication are incorrect and/or missing or incomplete and is significant, this can be re-submitted and published in subsequent releases. Any changes will be highlighted within the publication release. Please see the PHS revisions policy for further details. https://publichealthscotland.scot/publications/public-health-scotland-statistical-revisions-guidance/public-health-scotland-statistical-revisions-guidance-version-3/
Official statistics designation Accredited official statistics. These accredited official statistics were independently reviewed by the Office for Statistics Regulation in November 2012. They comply with the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics and should be labelled ‘Accredited official statistics'. For more information, please see: https://www.publichealthscotland.scot/publications/acute-hospital-activity-and-nhs-beds-information-quarterly/acute-hospital-activity-and-nhs-beds-information-quarterly-quarter-ending-30-september-2024/official-data-release-information/
Relevance and key uses of the statistics These statistics underwent a full assessment in September 2011. The UK Statistics Authority designated these statistics as National Statistics in November 2012. For more information, please see: https://www.publichealthscotland.scot/publications/acute-hospital-activity-and-nhs-beds-information-quarterly/acute-hospital-activity-and-nhs-beds-information-quarterly-quarter-ending-30-september-2024/official-data-release-information/
Format CSV
Language English
Links

"[Quarterly Publication] (https://www.publichealthscotland.scot/publications/acute-hospital-activity-and-nhs-beds-information-quarterly/acute-hospital-activity-and-nhs-beds-information-quarterly-quarter-ending-30-september-2024/) NHS England Outcomes and Performance, Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) [NHS Wales – Statistics and research](https://www.gov.wales/statistics-and-research Northern Ireland Hospital Statistics"