Publication - Research and analysis
Neonatal intensive care unit services - demand and capacity modelling: final report
This report outlines this modelling approach, inputs, and interpretation of the outputs to support the future of neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) services.
Annex A – Data Limitations
Within the available time for this work there have been some differences in extraction approaches across units, variability in the quality and coverage of data received. Key limitations and mitigation approaches are included in the table below.
| Source | Limitation | Mitigation |
|---|---|---|
| Aberdeen Maternity – activity data | Due to manual extraction needed, data has only been available in the timeframe for the smallest and sickest cohort, rather than full neonatal activity. This cohort has also been identified by searching electronic badger records for relevant search term, which may underestimate the cohort. | All infants who were identified by search criteria were manually reviewed by the AMH team for accuracy, and more aggregated totals have been used to provide the totality of neonatal activity for AMH. |
| Simpson Centre – activity data Ninewells – activity data | Data provided for these sites has not included a ‘day of life at admission’ field, making identification of distinct new admissions (rather than total episodes of care) difficult. | An overall episode to new admission ratio has been applied to estimate the number of new admissions for the given episodes. |
| University Hospital Crosshouse | Due to limited resources available in the neonatal team, and limited BI team access to the badger system, admissions data from local SMR02 data has been used. This is not at a granular level, meaning that it has not been possible to identify the sickest cohort using detailed flags, and estimates have been necessary to apportion total cot days to levels of care. | Estimates have been calculated based on known totals. As an early implementer, the impact on the Crosshouse site beyond baseline is not expected to be as significant as other sites, however the inability to identify the full cohort should be a recognised limitation. |
| Ninewells – activity data | Criteria with a flag for those requiring a chest drain was shown to be inaccurate and has been excluded. | Minimal impact is expected given the low activity volumes with this flag seen for other sites. |
Contact
Email: thebeststart@gov.scot
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