§ Mr. William Hamiltonasked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will make a statement on the computerising of all details of persons admitted to hospitals; how many persons have been so computerised to date; if he will list the facts recorded about each individual patient; and how long this process has been operating.
§ Mr. Gordon CampbellDetails of hospital in-patients have been collected since 1961 and provide national and regional statistics for use in planning and administration of the health service in Scotland. Since 1967 the processing of these statistics has been computer-based. The unit of collection is discharge from hospital and 640,000 discharges were recorded in 1971. No information is available on the number of persons contributing to this total since one person may be discharged on several occasions.
Information collected for each discharge from hospital is the patient's name and case reference number, sex, date of birth, marital status, area of residence, occupation (when available), diagnosis and operation (where relevant). Management data, which include dates of admission and discharge, type of bed occupied, and nature of admission—whether emergency or from waiting list—are also recorded.
All personal details are confidential.