Article
Recent trends in hospital use by children in England
R MacFaula, U Wernekeb
a Paediatric
Department, Pinderfields Hospital, Wakefield WF1 4DG, UK, b Maudsley Hospital, Denmark Hill, London
SE, UK
Correspondence to: Dr MacFaul mfrod{at}easynet.co.uk
Accepted 14 May 2001
BACKGROUND
Routine hospital
statistics for England appear to overestimate use of children's wards
and include numbers of well newborn babies staying with their mothers
after delivery ("well babies").
AIMTo review trends in use of
children's wards excluding data on newborn babies.
METHODSWe reviewed routine,
published, and age stratified data requested from the Department of
Health to identify separately "well babies" and babies receiving
neonatal specialist care from admissions (surgical and paediatric) to
children's wards.
RESULTSRoutine reports for
paediatric activity contain large numbers of "well babies", (almost
half the total) as well as babies receiving specialist neonatal care.
After excluding these, paediatric admissions represent 9.9% of the
child population aged under 5 years each year (an additional 2.5% are
admitted for surgical care). Between 1989 and 1997 paediatric
admissions rose by 19% and surgical admissions fell by 25% with a
plateau reached in overall child admissions. There are now fewer beds
in which children stay for a shorter time and there is more day case
surgery. Neonatal specialist care work has risen despite a fall in births.
CONCLUSIONCategories should be
established for reporting paediatric episodes on children's wards
separately from those on neonatal units, with better identification of
"well babies". When monitoring use of children's inpatient
facilities or planning new units, care must be taken to separate
paediatric data on neonatal units from work on children's wards.
Children's surgical episodes should also be taken into account.
Keywords: admissions; utilisation; hospital use; hospital statistics
© 2001 by Archives of Disease in Childhood
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