Emergency Admissions: Age & Gender Profile (part 2)
Lessons from an undisclosed NHS Trust
With facebook folk very sensibly asking if the age profile of emergency department admissions has changed between pre and post pandemic periods I thought I’d let my tea brew a little longer and produce this pleasing plot. I’ve flipped the y-axis (vertical) from raw counts to percentages to permit comparisons across pandemic phases. The greatest changes are seen with the under 12 year group. Note how the pandemic phase 3 percentages kick back up for the under 12y, 12-17y and 18-24y categories but not for any other age group. The marked progression and decline in the 80+y category is also interesting and is likely to be partly a result of survival bias.
This second graph plots the weekly mean age of all admissions for the period Jan 2017 – Sep 2021 (dashed lines represent week 1 of every year). We may note the steady progression prior to the pandemic and the seasonal dips and humps. There seems to be a pattern of older admissions during weeks 30 – 37, this being the height of summer (July/August). There’s also a curious dip in the mean age during weeks 47 – 49 of each year (Nov) and I’m wondering if this is connected to sporting activities. That first pandemic peak was reached during week 14 of 2020 (w/b 28th March), with the second peak being reached at the turn of 2020/21.
