Quick thread on a small and indirect piece of the jigsaw puzzle about how many people with learning disabilities and autistic people are dying during the COVID-19 pandemic. So - warnings apply about the content
#EveryDeathCounts
#right2home
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. @NHSDigital have released today (21 May) their monthly figures on people with learning disabilities and autistic people in specialist inpatient units, used to evaluate progress on the Transforming Care programme.
https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/learning-disability-services-statistics/provisional-statistics-at-april-2020-mhsds-february-2020-final
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These stats have always included the number of people dying in inpatient units (as a type of 'discharge'). For all these stats, numbers are rounded to the nearest 5, with numbers less than 5 (anything between 0 and 4) recorded as asterisks so individuals can't be identified.
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In all the years this has run, the number of people in inpatients dying in inpatient units in any one month has been an asterisk (less than 5 deaths). For the month of April 2020, for the first time, this is recorded as 5 deaths (which could be anything from 5-7 deaths).
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It's also important to say that (for understandable reasons), less than 3/4 of the service commissioners who provide the info (149 out of 206 commissioners) have reported info for April 2020, so the figure for April is likely to increase as more commissioners report in.
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What is happening to keep people in inpatient units safe and protected, and are inpatient units optimal places for COVID-19 infection control?
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