Thread by @JenWilliams_FT

A brief, niche but important complaint about the NHS and statistics, which goes as follows.

We have been trying to succinctly report the Covid picture here. Here’s an example. Each day my colleague @pdgallagher crunches the numbers and shows the rates and direction of travel.

However we often get accused of failing to put this into context. Where are the admissions? Why are we sensationalising??!!

Because we only have the infection rates on a daily basis. Not the admissions.

When we do get the admissions numbers they are (mostly, although they don’t always happen) at a GM level, via the mayoral press conference. Which is usually on a Wednesday. But not always. Here’s last week’s GM admissions for the previous 7 days. (Tiny, apologies.)

What we don’t get is trust by trust. We don’t even get it consistently week by week. So today I set out to get a straight answer as to why. And I: failed.

I began with Manchester Foundation Trust, because they’re massive. In fact i asked them yesterday for the latest stats, not today. I was told: ask GM. So I asked GM. And I was told: it’s up to NHS England. NHS England told me: it’s up to GM or the trust.

Yay

Interestingly though, NHSE sent a link to Barts. And look! Daily Covid hospital admissions.
bartshealth.nhs.uk/news/latest-up…

I would add that I know, somewhere in the GM system, an internal dashboard exists containing daily Covid admissions by trust. This is not data that doesn’t exist. And if we’re meant to tell people what’s going on, so they can understand things, we need it.

Finally: I hate covering health and want to go back to councils.

The end.