Summary

SHMI is the ratio between the actual number of patients who die following a treatment at the trust and the number that would be expected to die on the basis of average England figures, given the characteristics of the patients treated there.

It covers all deaths reported of patients who were admitted to acute, non-specialist trusts and either die while in hospital or within 30 days of discharge.

The data used to produce the SHMI is generated from data the trusts submit to the Secondary Uses Services (SUS) linked with data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) death registrations to enable capturing of deaths which occur outside of hospitals. Additional contextual indicators are also published alongside the SHMI to add some context to the interpretation of the SHMI.

How to use the SHMI

The SHMI requires careful interpretation, and should not be taken in isolation as a headline figure of trust performance. The SHMI is an indication of whether individual trusts are conforming to the national baseline of hospital-related mortality. Mortality within a trust is described as either ‘as expected', ‘lower than expected' or ‘higher than expected'. All trusts are encouraged to explore and understand the activity which underlies their SHMI from their own data collection sources.

Who can use SHMI

• The SHMI can be used locally by individual hospital trusts to assess and investigate their mortality related outcomes.
• Regulators and commissioning organisations can also use the SHMI to investigate outcomes for trusts under their jurisdiction.

In all of these cases the SHMI should not be used in isolation but in conjunction with other indicators (SHMI contextual indicators and other mortality indicators) and information from other sources (patient feedback, staff surveys and other such material) that together form a holistic view of trust outcomes and a fuller overview of how trust processes are impacting on outcomes.

While the public and patients will be interested in the SHMI, it is not intended primarily for use by patients or the public as it has not been specifically tailored for a public audience.

Revisions Procedures

Any revisions and/or corrections relating to the SHMI Official Statistics and any other related publications will comply with the HSCIC Revisions Process as detailed in the Revisions Procedure document.

• Find out more about SHMI