Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what the cost was of emergency admissions for bladder and bowel problems amongst children and young people aged 19 and under in each of the last five years.

Health is a devolved matter in Scotland, and the information is not available in the format requested for England.

Such information as is available is from reference costs, which are the average unit cost to National Health Service hospital trusts in England of providing defined services to patients in a given financial year. Reference costs for acute care are collected by healthcare resource group (HRG), a secondary classification system which groups similar treatments that use similar resources and which is organised into chapters and sub-chapters that cover different body areas or systems. Chapter FZ covers the digestive system and includes, but is not limited to, HRGs for bowel problems. Sub-chapter LB covers the urinary tract and male reproductive system and includes, but is not limited to, bladder disorders. Many, but not all, HRGs make use of patient age to differentiate between children and adults. In addition to being collected by HRG, reference costs for acute care are also collected by admission method, including non-elective admissions. Non-elective admissions predominantly comprise of emergency admissions but also other admission methods as defined by the NHS data dictionary at:

http://www.datadictionary.nhs.uk/data_dictionary/attributes/a/add/admission_method_de.asp?shownav=1

Reference costs are published annually, most recently for 2014-15. The national reference cost schedule summarises all the costs submitted by NHS hospital trusts as national average unit costs. The following links are to each schedule for the last five years:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/480791/2014-15_National_Schedules.xlsx

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/397469/03a_2013-14_National_Schedule_-_CF-NET_updated.xls

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/260405/2012-13_national_schedule_of_reference_costs.xls

NHS reference costs: financial year 2011 to 2012 - Publications - GOV.UK

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/215298/dh_131145.xls