NCRM Introduction Hospital Episode Statistics - Online

This online course will provide participants with an understanding of how Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) data are collected and coded, their structure, and how to clean and analyse HES data.

A key focus will be on developing an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of HES, how inconsistencies arise, and approaches to deal with these. Participants will also learn how to ensure individuals’ anonymity and confidentiality when carrying out analyses and publishing results based on HES.

The course consists of a mixture of lectures and practicals for which participants will use Stata software to clean and analyse HES data.

The course covers:

• HES data collection and coding
• HES data structure
• How to clean and manage HES data
• How to ensure anonymity and confidentiality
• How to carry out basic analyses using HES data
• Sources of variation in HES data
• How to apply for HES data

By the end of the course participants will:

• understand how and why HES data are collected
• become aware of the strength and weaknesses of using HES data for research
• know how to carry out basic cleaning, management and analysis tasks using HES data
• know how to ensure anonymity and confidentiality when using HES

The course is for researchers and data analysts in academia, government and private sector at all levels who are using or planning to use HES for their work.

There are no pre-requisites for the lectures. Computer practicals will involve analysis of simulated data therefore previous experience of programming in Stata, R or SAS will be helpful.