Figures on deaths from Hospital-acquired pneumonia (HAP)

​​​Request 786175097

Provide figures across the last five years, starting from 2020 till 2025 (year to date) of the number of patients who have died of Hospital-acquired pneumonia (HAP) whilst at Jersey's General Hospital.

Response

Data has been provided from the Public Health mortality database, held by Health and Care Jersey’s Public Health directorate and used to produce​ statistical mortality reporting.

In line with the request parameters, this response considers deaths that occurred in hospital only; it does not include deaths occurring in the community, other healthcare settings, or deaths of Jersey residents elsewhere.

Due to the delays which can sometimes occur with registration of deaths, it is standard practice for mortality data to be reported in arrears. Cause of death information for 2025 is not yet available; mortality cause coding is carried out in accordance with the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems 10th Revision (ICD-10), and is completed externally by the Office for National Statistics. Information on deaths occurring during the calendar year 2025 is scheduled to be published on 15 October 2026, as per the Public Health Intelligence publication schedule linked below. Data may be affected upon conclusion of any inquests that remain open at the time of reporting.

Public Health Intelligence publication release schedule​

Mortality data is taken from the information collected at death registration. All of the conditions documented on the death certificate are coded using the ICD-10. From all of these, a cause of death is determined and codes are attributed for this and any underlying contributing causes, in line with ICD-10 coding standards.

There is no designated mortality cause code which singularly categorises hospital-acquired pneumonia (HAP) in the ICD-10 classification. Information for this response represents cases where pneumonia has been coded as an underlying cause of death and where hospital-acquired pneumonia / HAP has been explicitly documented on the death certificate.

The following ICD-10 codes were employed in this analysis:

▪ J18.0: Bronchopneumonia, unspecified

▪ J18.1: Lobar pneumonia, unspecified

▪ J18.9: Pneumonia, unspecified

A review of records has identified a total of 6 deaths from 2020 to 2024 (inclusive) where pneumonia (J18.0, J18.1 or J18.9) has been coded as an underlying cause of death and hospital-acquired pneumonia / HAP has been referenced on the death certificate. As numbers are small, annual figures are not provided.​

Internal Review Response

The Medical Director of Health and Care Jersey (HCJ) and the Head of HCJ Business Intelligence were asked to undertake the Internal Review. Neither party had been involved in composing or approving the original response.

The Internal Review was coordinated and administered by the HCJ FOI Officer, and took place at the Jersey General Hospital on 31st March 2026. The in-scope FOI response and the Internal Review Procedure were shared with both reviewers on this day.

Both the Medical Director and the Head of HCJ Business Intelligence were asked to consider whether:

• the Freedom of Information request had been handled appropriately
• there were any other options available in order to respond to the request
• it is possible to provide you with any further information, and

They will also provide an outcome of the internal review by stating whether:

• the original decision is upheld, or
• the original decision is reversed in part or in full, or
• the original decision is modified
  

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Was the request handled appropriately, were there any other options available, and is it possible to provide you with any further information?

The Public Health Intelligence team within HCJ’s Public Health directorate provided the data for deaths registered from 2020 through to 2024 (inclusive), where pneumonia was documented as an underlying cause of death and hospital-acquired pneumonia has been referenced on the death certificate, and where such a death occurred at Jersey General Hospital. Figures for 2025 are not yet available for the reasons explained in HCJ’s original response, and numbers are sufficiently small that providing an annual breakdown could identify individual cases.

The authoritative record for cause of death is maintained by the Office of the Superintendent Registrar (OSIR), which serves as the primary source for reporting, including the M​ortality Report produced by the Public Health Intelligence team and published on www.gov.je​.

Deaths are registered with the OSIR according to information documented on death certificates as described in HCJ’s response; there is no rationale for duplication of the OSIR master record.

Whilst inpatient admissions to Jersey General Hospital are subject to retrospective clinical coding, this captures morbidity (health state) rather than mortality, and no alternative source data is available to report the information requested.

As such, the response constitutes the information available for HCJ to report upon at the time of the request, provided by the relevant area.

Regarding the query on accuracy of the figures reported

The applicant has communicated a concern of discrepancy between the figures provided in HCJ’s response and a prior response. HCJ has not provided a response in relation to deaths from hospital-acquired pneumonia previously, though a search of FOI responses published on www.gov.je​ identified a request for similar mortality data in February 2025; that query deals with deaths from hospital-acquired pneumonia in a single year (2024), though did not include location or setting-specific restrictions, so provides population-level mortality data. Population-level reporting will include deaths occurring in Jersey – whether in hospital, in other care settings, or in the community – as well as deaths that occurred overseas to Jersey residents where their body was subsequently repatriated to Jersey.

Therefore, the datasets for the February 2025 response provided by Justice and Home Affairs and the February 2026 response provided by HCJ are not directly comparable, with the key distinction being the inclusion of a specified place of death in the latter request.

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Outcome

It was agreed that HCJ appropriately handled the original response and that the information contained therein was accurate. Therefore, the original decision is upheld​.