The Admission Trend dashboard shows trends in inpatient activity over time for your selected organisation and filter options, and how this compares with the average.

• how many respiratory admissions there were nationally or in a specific area or organisation (see drop-down box Organisation Type). 
• what sort of admission they were (e.g. elective, emergency, readmissions) 

• the number/rate of admissions, the number of patients the admissions related to, the total cost of the admissions, the cost per patient, the number of bed days and the length of stay (see drop-down box Value Type) 

• how these figures compare with 1 and 2 years ago (see 1-year and 2-year variation). 
• how the selected organisation or area ranks against other organisations or areas in that grouping (e.g. other ICBs) (Select between Value and Rank on lefthand side of visualisation). We would, however, recommend using the Admissions comparator dashboard for this because it allows you to see all the areas ranked in one view rather than only the ranking of your selected organisation.

• see how admission types (selected using the drop-down box Admission Type on righthand side and the “Min, max, nat avg” option under Bubbles/line) at the selected organisation or area) compare nationally and how this compares with the organisation or area with the highest or lowest value of the value type you’ve selected. For example, you could understand how the cost per patient in a selected ICB compares with the national average and how this compares with the ICBs with the lowest and highest cost per patient.
• see how these have changed over the past 3 years for the selected organisation and nationally (select Trend line under Bubbles/line heading). (This provides a data available in the first visualisation in graph form). 
• Changing the filters within the second visualisation does not make changes to the first 
• Colour gradients have been used to reflects different magnitudes of Value Type (e.g. admissions, cost, bed days) selected across the years (with the lowest values in the lightest colours to the  highest values in the darkest colours) 
• Normalisation type has been set to Rate per 100,000 as default as this is the preferred option for comparing indicators. To see raw numbers please select Absolute.
• Where the selected organisation type is too small for normalisation to be possible (e.g. Trusts), no data will show until Absolute is selected in the Normalisation drop down box.

Key definitions

• Admissions – number of spells of care, total continuous stay of a patient using a hospital bed after admission to hospital, can be made up of multiple episodes, including critical care. 
• Bed days – total duration of all spells of care, duration between admission date and final episode discharge date. 
• Cost – cost of entire spell of care, calculated using national tariff cost for the spell, not cost of procedure or diagnosis but reimbursement given to provider from ICS (more detail in the Reference Information p13) 
• Diagnosis Position – Primary diagnosis is the diagnosis which brought a patient into hospital Secondary diagnosis position is an existing health condition that is not the main reason for the current healthcare (i.e. underlying chronic condition). All diagnosis position is where the selected diagnosis has been coded in any position within a hospital spell.  
• Elective – the admission to hospital for treatment is from the waiting list. 
• Emergency – non-elective admission, the admission was unpredictable/unplanned and at short notice because of clinical need. 
• Episode – time a patient spends under continuous care of a consultant/healthcare professional. Multiple episodes make up a spell, i.e. an admission.  
• Patients – number of distinct patients, a patient can come into hospital multiple times for the same diagnosis. 
• Spell – total time a patient spends in hospital/under the care of the physician(s), each spell can have one or more episodes. 
• 30-day re-admission – emergency (non-elective) admission within 30 days of a previous admission