Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many residents of care homes had an emergency admission to a hospital in 2015-16.

Accurate information on the number of residents of care homes that had an emergency admission to a hospital is not available.

Hospital episode statistics include a field which identifies where the patient was immediately prior to admission. Most patients are admitted from home, categorised as ‘usual place of residence, including no fixed abode’, but there are exceptions. This field therefore includes a range of other categories, including care homes.

There may be admissions recorded as ‘usual place of residence, including no fixed abode’ where the patient was actually resident in a residential or nursing care home rather than their home, but this was designated as their usual place of residence. The number of times this occurs is unknown, but admissions recorded as from a care home are likely to be significantly understated.