Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government whether they plan to require acute trusts to report on numbers of sepsis cases and outcomes.

There is a lack of reliable estimates of the incidence and prevalence of sepsis cases due to inconsistency in the definitions used to describe sepsis, and differences in the coding between professionals and organisations in the United Kingdom. The Department continues to work with NHS England and the UK Health Security Agency to improve our understanding of sepsis data and to monitor trends in infection incidence and deaths from sepsis, which are complex and multifactorial.

Although it is not the main purpose of NHS England’s dataset, the data NHS England currently collects provides information on the number of admissions and discharges for sepsis, as well as the number of deaths. At this time, there are no plans to require trusts to report on the number of sepsis cases and outcomes.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) publishes data on the number of death registrations where sepsis was the underlying cause of death, and where sepsis was mentioned anywhere on the death certificate, in England and Wales between 2001 and 2023. The copy of the published ONS data for deaths involving sepsis in England and Wales between 2001 and 2023 is attached.