Catastrophic Health Collapse (part 7)

In this article I utilise in-hospital death data for 2017 – 2021 from a sizeable NHS Trust to reveal trends in respiratory & COVID death

Part 5 of this series sets the essential background to this analysis. Before we get stuck in again this morning I ought to mention what is meant by a ‘respiratory death’. As previously stated this not the clear cut definition our minds would like to see. For example, one or more respiratory diagnoses prior to death may be recorded on the patient administration system but the patient may well have died from liver failure. Another layer of complexity comes with the specialist team of clinical coders whose job it is to scour medical notes and code diagnoses, treatments and outcomes to ensure a flow of money into each NHS Trust. Since we’re talking contractual matters then clinical coders tend to speak a different language to medics.

What Does ‘Respiratory’ Mean?

In terms of ICD-10 coded diagnoses for in-hospital deaths involving respiratory illness you’ve got an entire chapter of possible codes: Chapter X (J00-J99) Diseases of the respiratory system. Last time I looked chapter this spanned…