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Unintentional injury in England: an analysis of the emergency care data set pilot in Oxfordshire from 2012 to 2014
  1. Graham Kirkwood1,
  2. Thomas C Hughes2,
  3. Allyson M Pollock1
  1. 1Blizard Institute, Queen Mary University of London, Centre for Primary Care and Public Health, London, UK
  2. 2Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Oxford, UK
  1. Correspondence to Graham Kirkwood, Blizard Institute, Queen Mary University of London, Centre for Primary Care and Public Health, London E1 2AB, UK; g.kirkwood{at}qmul.ac.uk

Abstract

Background A pilot injury data collection exercise at the emergency departments (EDs) of Oxford University Hospitals National Health Service (NHS) Foundation Trust (OUH) ran from 2012 to 2014 to inform the current development of the new NHS England emergency care data set.

Methods Data collected at the EDs of OUH 1 January 2012 to 30 March 2014 analysed for Oxford City and Cherwell District Council areas. Data completeness and quality checked against Hospital Episode Statistic (HES) returns.

Results Of the 63 877 injury attendances recorded at the 2 sites, 26 536 were unintentional with a home postcode within Oxford City or Cherwell District Council areas. The most frequent location, mechanism, activity and diagnosis were home (39.1% of all unintentional injuries (UIs)), low-level falls (47.1%), leisure (31.1%) and ‘injuries to unspecified part of trunk, limb or body region’ (20.5%), respectively. The most deprived quintile of the population (Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) 1) had the highest European Age Standardised Rate (EASR) for all UIs and IMD 5 had the lowest, 54.4 (95% CI 52.3 to 56.5) and 32.2 (31.4 to 33.0) per 1000 person-years, respectively. There was a significant association between increasing levels of deprivation and an increasing incidence rate ratio (IRR) for all UIs, for those in the home, for low-level fall UIs and for non-sport leisure UIs with a particularly sharp increase in the IRR for IMD 1 compared with IMD 5. Sport-related injuries were inversely related to deprivation apart from football.

Conclusions This pilot has demonstrated both the feasibility and importance of prioritising the collection of a national injury data set.

  • INJURIES
  • SOCIO-ECONOMIC
  • DEPRIVATION

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Footnotes

  • Contributors TCH was responsible for the design of the data set, its implementation in the hospitals and ensuring efficient collection of data. GK analysed and reported on the data. GK and AMP designed the study and all three authors drafted and edited the manuscript. TCH takes responsibility for the integrity of the data and GK had access to the study data and takes responsibility for the accuracy of the data analysis.

  • Competing interests GK was employed under a grant awarded to the Centre for Trauma Sciences project by the Barts Charity; TCH is chair of the Informatics Committee of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, which develops case mix measures and high-quality data collection and information technology systems for the specialty of emergency medicine, and had a scholarship from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents to conduct another related study of emergency department data in 2011.

  • Ethics approval Information Governance for the data extract was approved by the Caldicott Guardian at Oxford University Hospitals National Health Service (NHS) Foundation Trust.

  • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.