Inpatient, Day Case and Outpatient Activity
Data Sources: The Scottish Morbidity Record 00 (Outpatients - SMR00)
SMR00 relates to all outpatients (new and follow-up) in specialties other than Accident & Emergency (A&E), and Genito-Urinary Medicine.
An outpatient is a patient who attends a consultant or other medical clinic or has an arranged meeting with a consultant or a senior member of his team outwith a clinic session. Outpatients are categorised as new outpatients or follow-up (return) outpatients.
These are split into;
-
New Outpatient - this is when a patient has a first meeting with a conslultant or his representative following an outpatient referral.
-
Follow-up (return) outpatient - this is when a patient has a second and subsequent attendances following the initial referral OR is there first and subsequent attendances following an inpatient/day case episode.
-
Did not Attend - this is when the patient did not attend (DNA) and when the hospital is not notified in advance of the patient's unavailability to attend on the offered admission date, or for any appointment.
SMR00 allows the recording of procedural information, for which a "Short list of Procedures performed on Outpatients" is available. The recording of this shortlist of procedures was mandatory, however many hospitals didn't record these procedures. As from 2003 it became mandatory that all procedures were recorded, again this remains inconsistent across NHS Boards.
Outpatient data is available from 1991 onwards. Records are submitted on discharge. However, data is only readily available from April 1997 onwards.
Patient Team
Printer friendly version
