Drug and alcohol hospital admissions 2017 to 2023 (FOI)

Request

Please provide the numbers of inpatient hospital admissions for drugs and alcohol from 2017 to date, broken down by diagnosis code and year, as well as by age (under versus over 18).

For reference, please see the below Freedom of Information responses:

Hospital admissions related to drug misuse (FOI)

Alcohol and drug treatment of under 19 year olds (FOI)

Response

All diagnosis codes from the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems 10th Revision (ICD-10) representing misuse of alcohol, drugs, or other substances have been considered for this response. Additionally, codes detailing toxic effect of alcohol, poisoning by psychostimulants with abuse potential, and poisoning by narcotics and psychodysleptics (encompassing substances that are chiefly non-prescribed or illicit, and some drugs that may be prescribed (for example cannabis, methadone and other synthetic narcotics)), have been included. Legality is not a factor in code attribution.

The list of codes and code descriptions which admissions have been recorded against is included in Table 1 of the attached documents. 

Table 1.pdf

Figures are provided up to 30 April 2023, as this is the latest available full month of validated data. Health and Community Services’ Patient Administration System was replaced with a new Electronic Patient Record system in May 2023. Statistical reporting of activity is currently being finalised and validated, as part of acceptance testing of the new system.

Data for this response is derived from reporting by discharge date. As such, patients who were admitted prior to 1 January 2017 but discharged after this date will be included. For the same reason, patients admitted prior to 30 April 2023 but discharged after this date will not be included in the numbers. 

Clinical Coding of a patient’s admission is carried out after discharge from hospital. Data is incomplete for the full time period in question, and subsequently, figures may be subject to change as Clinical Coding of admissions continues and completion levels increase.

In consideration of National Clinical Coding standards and conventions, chronic conditions have been included in results when coded in the primary diagnosis field, indicating that they were the main condition treated in an admission. This is the only way to determine that they were a reason for admission through coding alone.

Alcohol consumed alongside any other drug / medicament must be coded as a toxic effect (poisoning) at T51.0: Toxic effect of ethanol. To ensure that figures for alcohol poisoning / toxic effects of alcohol truly represent cases where this was documented as such, results have been limited to those where T51.0 was coded in the primary diagnosis field.

Figures provided for all other acute conditions include all cases where these appear anywhere in the coded diagnoses.

Adult admissions (includes any individual aged 18 years or older at the time of admission)

Please refer to Table 1 attached for the list of codes for their associated code description.

Table 2 of the attached documents details the annual adult admission figures for alcohol intoxication (F10.0), and alcohol withdrawal (F10.3) for the specified timeframe:

Table 2.pdf

Due to small numbers in several (or all) years for which data has been requested, a breakdown of annual figures cannot be provided for the following codes detailing conditions for which admissions were recorded. Article 25 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has been applied to protect the privacy of individuals, and total figures for the timeframe have been provided instead. Please see Table 3 attached. 

Table 3.pdf

Admissions for those aged under 18 at the time of admission

(Please refer to Table 1 attached for the list of codes for their associated code description).

Table 4 attached details the annual admission figures for alcohol intoxication (F10.0) in those aged under 18 at the time of admission. Where numbers are small, disclosure controls have been applied to protect individuals from identification, and numbers fewer than five are shown as ‘<5’. Article 25 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has been applied to protect the privacy of individuals. 

Table 4.pdf

Due to small numbers in several (or all) years for which data has been requested, a breakdown of annual figures cannot be provided for the following codes detailing conditions for which admissions were recorded. Article 25 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has been applied to protect the privacy of individuals, and total figures for the timeframe have been provided instead. See Table 5 of the attached documents. 

Table 5.pdf

Article applied

Article 25 - Personal information

(1) Information is absolutely exempt information if it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2005.

(2) Information is absolutely exempt information if –

(a) it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is not the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2005; and

(b) its supply to a member of the public would contravene any of the data protection principles, as defined in that Law.

3)      In determining for the purposes of this Article whether the lawfulness principle in Article 8(1)(a) of the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2018 would be contravened by the disclosure of information, paragraph 5(1) of Schedule 2 to that Law (legitimate interests) is to be read as if sub-paragraph (b) (which disapplies the provision where the controller is a public authority) were omitted.