1. Running a Regional HES Service for London Neeraj Malhotra, Data Specialist Justine Fitzpatrick, Lead Analyst www.lho.org.uk

2. What is HES? HES is a database of all in-patient hospital activity in NHS hospitals across England. It includes daycare, inpatient, maternity and mental health episodes. It does not (yet) include outpatients, A&E and private hospital episodes. The unit of measurement is a Finished Consultant Episode (FCE). The PHOs can hold ten years’ worth of data. For London, each year’s worth of data is approximately 2 million records.

3. What is a regional HES Service? 1Being a Safe Haven for HES data: The extract we receive has more fields, including sensitive data items such as postcode. Access is granted to certain LHO staff to the national HES data sets, but not for sensitive data items. Access is granted to quarterly data – with a caveat 2More resources are available to provide analyses for London and to run an ad hoc enquiry service

4. At what stage is the LHO? Established presence on national PHO HES technical group and HES management group. Made progress on the HES IT Strategy Made progress on the HES Data Strategy Developing the HES Analytical Strategy

5. Who is in the team at the LHO? Justine Fitzpatrick – Lead analyst, HES programme director Neeraj Malhotra – Data Specialist, HES Project Manager for Data Management and Access David Hofman, Information Analyst, HES Project Manager for Analytical Strategy Joseph Callanan – Enquiries Officer – will receive HES enquiries

6. LHO draft analytical strategy Three categories of analysis: A - Analyses of national relevance B - Analyses important to London and agreed with London’s stakeholders C - Ad hoc requests for data

7. B – London’s analytical strategy Two strands: Basic indicator work e.g. admission rates for specific procedures or diagnoses by age, sex, geography, ethnicity, deprivation categories. Complex analysis and methodology development e.g. inequalities in revascularisation including private sector data, a methodology for analysing variations in avoidable admissions.

8. Questions Would you welcome basic indicator work as well as more complex analysis? Do you think the indicators listed in Annex 1 are useful and do you have any further suggestions? Do you think that more complex analysis and methodology development is useful and do you have any suggestions for what is needed? How do you think this work should be prioritised? Do you have any thoughts on dissemination of HES data?