Activity in Acute Public Hospitals in Ireland 1990-1999

The Hospital In-Patient Enquiry (HIPE) system is the principal source of national data on discharges from acute public hospitals in Ireland. The HIPE is a computer-based health information system designed to collect clinical and administrative data on deaths and discharges from the 60 acute public hospitals currently participating in the system. Since 1990, managment of this system has been contracted by the Department of Health & Children to the Economic and Social Research Institute where the HIPE & NPRS Unit is responsible for overseeing the collection, coding, input, quality, processing and reporting of data from participating hospitals. In addition to providing training for all staff involved in HIPE at the hospital level, the ESRIs HIPE & NPRS Unit is also responsible for the development and support of the computer system used for the collection of HIPE data. While not exhaustive, this report is intended to facilitate an appreciation for the scope of the data reported to the HIPE system over the ten-year period 1990-1999. As each HIPE discharge record represents one episode of care, data on close to five and a half million discharges have been collected over this decade. All we can hope to achieve in one report therefore is to present some highlights from the most comprehensive database available on activity in acute public hospitals in Ireland and, hopefully, encourage further interrogation of this information by those interested in advancing the understanding of this sector.