Content
About the statistics
Definitions
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Name and topic
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Name: Patient statistics
Topic: Health
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Responsible division
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Division for Health, care and social statistics
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Definitions of the main concepts and variables
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General Hospitals are hospitals that admit patients with physical disorders; as opposed to psychiatric hospitals.
In-patients: admission with an actual or planned overnight stay.
Patients with day cases: admission without an overnight stay and treatment at the out-patient clinic that is more comprehensive than an out-patient consultation.
Out-patients: short-term treatment performed in hospital.
Bed-days: is the number of days an admitted patient with in-patient stays takes up a bed.
Classification of diseases:diagnoses are encoded by ICD-10 (International Classification of Diseases). Classification ICD-10 gives information on the patient's condition, but gives little information about the treatment.
Diagnosis refers to the main condition for which the patient receives treatment.
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Standard classifications
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Gender : http://www.ssb.no/a/metadata/conceptvariable/vardok/112/nb
ICD-10: https://volven.no/produkt.asp?id=288799&catID=3&subID=8
Administrative information
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Regional level
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National level, county and health region.
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Frequency and timeliness
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Annual publication.
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International reporting
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Not relevant
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Microdata
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Microdata, information on the sample and population are stored as text files.
Background
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Background and purpose
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Statistics on the population's use of general hospitals; diagnoses, treatment level as inpatient stays, outpatient consultations and day treatment, distributed by geography, gender and age. The statistics are compiled based on the hospitals’ reporting to the Norwegian Patient Register (NPR).
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Users and applications
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The public, health authorities and others.
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Equal treatment of users
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No external users have access to the statistics and analyses before they are published and accessible simultaneously for all users on ssb.no at 8 am. Prior to this, a minimum of three months' advance notice is given in the Statistics Release Calendar. This is one of Statistics Norway’s key principles for ensuring that all users are treated equally.
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Coherence with other statistics
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The NPR publishes statistics based on the data from the database, https://helsedirektoratet.no/statistikk-og-analyse/statistikk-fra-norsk-pasientregister.
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Legal authority
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Statistics Act, § 3.2 (Administrative registers)
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EEA reference
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Not relevant
Production
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Population
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The statistics cover all persons who are residents of Norway. Persons living in Norway temporarily are not included in the statistics.
The statistics cover activity in general hospitals. Mental health care and multidisciplinary specialist substance abuse treatment are not included.
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Data sources and sampling
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The data source is the somatic hospitals’ reporting to the NPR. This health registry includes a selection of information recorded at the treatment site when patients are referred to or receive health care in specialist services. The register is owned by the Norwegian Directorate of Health.
If a patient has to stay at several departments at the same institution during the same admission, these stays are aggregated to one hospital stay. The statistics give an overview of the number of patients with at least one stay in a general hospital.
The NPR statistics include all people who have received treatment. Statistics Norway does not include foreign residents in these statistics. Statistics Norway excluded some units in the years before 2015, and for these years the population is not comparable to that used by the NPR.
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Collection of data, editing and estimations
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Data are subjected to controls and an internal revision by the NPR.
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Seasonal adjustment
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Not relevant
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Confidentiality
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Figures cannot be published where an individual’s identity could be revealed. The statistics follow Statistics Norway’s general rules on confidentiality.
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Comparability over time and space
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The statistics are comparable to statistics published by the NPR, and statistics on the specialist health service are supplementary.
Accuracy and reliability
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Sources of error and uncertainty
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Only persons resident in Norway and registered with a valid personal identification number are included in the statistics. There is assumed to be a degree of misreporting of diagnoses.
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Revision
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Not relevant