Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many children and young people have been seen as outpatients at Stafford Hospital in each of the years (a) 2009-10, (b) 2010-11, (c) 2011-12, (d) 2012-13 and (e) 2013-14.

The information is not available in the format requested.

Information on the number of outpatient attendances for individuals aged 0-17 (inclusive) at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, since 2009-10 is shown in the following table.

Source: Hospital Episode Statistics (HES), The Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC)

Notes:

1. Outpatient attendances:

A patient's treatment in outpatients can consist of a series of attendances; a distinction between the first in the series and subsequent attendances is commonly reported. The data provided here includes all episodes, whether it was a first or a subsequent attendance, and also includes tele-consultations.

2. Assessing growth through time (Outpatients):

HES figures are available from 2003-04 onwards. Changes to the figures over time need to be interpreted in the context of improvements in data quality and coverage (particularly in earlier years), improvements in coverage of independent sector activity (particularly from 2006-07) and changes in NHS practice. For example, changes in activity may be due to changes in the provision of care.

3. Provisional data: The data is provisional and may be incomplete or contain errors for which no adjustments have yet been made. Counts produced from provisional data are likely to be lower than those generated for the same period in the final dataset. This shortfall will be most pronounced in the final month of the latest period, i.e. November from the (month 9) April to November extract. It is also probable that clinical data are not complete, which may in particular affect the last two months of any given period. There may also be errors due to coding inconsistencies that have not yet been investigated and corrected.