A novel approach to estimate the local population denominator to calculate disease incidence for hospital-based health events in England.
Epidemiol Infect
; 150: e150, 2022 07 11.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-35811424
ABSTRACT
While incidence studies based on hospitalisation counts are commonly used for public health decision-making, no standard methodology to define hospitals' catchment population exists. We conducted a review of all published community-acquired pneumonia studies in England indexed in PubMed and assessed methods for determining denominators when calculating incidence in hospital-based surveillance studies. Denominators primarily were derived from census-based population estimates of local geographic boundaries and none attempted to determine denominators based on actual hospital access patterns in the community. We describe a new approach to accurately define population denominators based on historical patient healthcare utilisation data. This offers benefits over the more established methodologies which are dependent on assumptions regarding healthcare-seeking behaviour. Our new approach may be applicable to a wide range of health conditions and provides a framework to more accurately determine hospital catchment. This should increase the accuracy of disease incidence estimates based on hospitalised events, improving information available for public health decision making and service delivery planning.
Key words
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Hospitalization
/
Hospitals
Type of study:
Etiology_studies
/
Incidence_studies
/
Observational_studies
/
Prognostic_studies
/
Risk_factors_studies
Aspects:
Patient_preference
Limits:
Humans
Country/Region as subject:
Europa
Language:
En
Journal:
Epidemiol Infect
Journal subject:
DOENCAS TRANSMISSIVEIS
/
EPIDEMIOLOGIA
Year:
2022
Document type:
Article
Affiliation country:
United kingdom