High Level Summary of Statistics Trend Last update: Friday, May 16, 2008
Acute Hospital Care
Acute hospitals provide a wide range of specialist care and treatment for patients, for example outpatient consultation, emergency treatment, surgery, diagnostic procedures and close observation and short-term care of patients with worrying health symptoms. Data on acute hospitals exclude obstetric, psychiatric and long stay care services.
It can be seen from the chart below that non-routine (emergency) inpatient activity has been gradually increasing, to around half a million in 2006/07. For routine planned admissions, there are around twice as many day cases as inpatients.
Source: ISD
The total number of consultant outpatient attendances has shown a slight decline in recent years. This reduction may be as a result of service redesign. For example, some return outpatients, where clinically appropriate, are now offered a telephone consultation as an alternative to a clinic appointment. One-stop clinics, in some specialties, increasingly offer a consultation, diagnosis and treatment service all in one visit, where previously this could involve several appointments. The number of new consultant outpatients attendances remains broadly consistent at around 1.35 million a year.
Source: ISD