Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to the Answer of 10 February 2015 to Question 223644, how many children who (a) were admitted to a hospital bed because of a psychiatric condition and (b) attended A&E with a diagnosis of psychiatric conditions were not attending for the first time.

We do not hold the data in the format requested. However, outlined below is a count of patients admitted to hospital with a primary diagnosis of a mental and behavioural disorder, and a count of patients who attended accident and emergency (A&E) (excluding planned attendances) with a diagnosis of a psychiatric condition: once, twice, three, four and five or more times within the same year, for patients aged 0-18 who were admitted to hospital or attended A&E for 2010/11-2013/14.

Count of patients aged 0-18 (inclusive) who have been admitted to hospital once, twice, three, four and five or more times within the given year with a primary diagnosis of a mental and behavioural disorder for the years 2010/11 to 2013/14

Count of patients aged 0-18 (inclusive) who have attended A&E (excluding planned attendances) once, twice, three, four and five or more times within the given year with an A&E diagnosis of ‘psychiatric conditions’ for the years 2010/11 to 2013/14

Activity in English NHS Hospitals and English NHS commissioned activity in the independent sector

Source: HES, HSCIC

Notes:

1. Since a patient may attend A&E and then be admitted to hospital the figures from the two tables should not be added together.

2. The 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 HES data set and provides the main reason why the patient was admitted to hospital. ICD-10 codes used: F00-F99 mental and behavioural disorders excluding F17 - mental and behavioural disorders due to use of tobacco.

3. HES 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 NHS 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. The following code was used to identify psychiatric conditions within the A&E dataset: 35 = psychiatric conditions. Please note that the recording of the diagnosis field within the A&E data set is not mandatory. It is not known to what extent changes over time are as a result of improvements in recording practice.

5. HES figures are available from 2007/08 onwards. Changes to the figures over time need to be interpreted in the context of improvements in data quality and coverage and changes in NHS practice. For example, changes in activity may be due to changes in the provision of care. Note that HES include activity ending in the year in question and run from April to March, e.g. 2012/13 includes activity occurring between 1st April 2012 and 31st March 2013.

6. HES are compiled from data sent by more than 300 NHS 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.