CarolineMorton
commented
3 years ago I think it is a complicated issue. Some thoughts below.
In my experience admission data is quite good, but it may be better for some in lockdown, and worse for others. Let me explain - In general, admission to a local hospital feedback quite quickly into the GP record. In the case of Tower Hamlets and Barts Health for example, this is done electronic through EMIS and appears almost at once. However if a patient gets admitted to a different hospital, such as UCLH or Homerton, you don't find out until a notification comes via email or post or more often, a discharge letter arrives.
Thinking about this, if people are still staying local - i.e. not travelling to see relatives etc, then they are probably more likely to attend their local trust. But we know a lot of younger people went back to their parents etc but they may still be registered with a GP where they were, but if they were admitted, it wouldn't be close by and may not be recorded as a result.
Worth noting that an admission to a hospital not near your practice, may prompt questions about where you are living and end up with deregistration from your GP. Also people are incentivised to registered locally at the moment if they want a vaccine.
One other option that's been discussed briefly is using admission notifications sent to GPs when patients are admitted.
It may well be a dead-end, but useful to at least document why.
My understanding is that when patients are admitted to hospital, the GP is notified at or sooner after the admission. The notification might not be detailed enough to specifically identify covid-related admissions, or might not occur for all admission types, but perhaps combined with a recent positive test something could be done. We'd need to identify the relevant CTV3 codes
@CarolineMorton you will probably know more about this than me -- any thoughts on whether this is worth pursuing?