Admission of Full-Term Babies to Neonatal Care (NHSOF 5.5)

A public health indicator tracking the percentage of full-term babies (gestation greater than 36 weeks) admitted to neonatal units within 28 days of birth. The dataset is produced by the Government Digital Service and was last updated in February 2016. Its stated purpose is to reduce avoidable admissions and improve maternity service safety.

Use Cases

• Benchmarking hospital performance based on the rate of full-term neonatal admissions.
• Analyzing trends in avoidable admissions to neonatal care over time.
• Evaluating the impact of maternity safety initiatives on the admission indicator.

Strengths

• Data is published under the Open Government Licence, facilitating reuse.
• Indicator has a clear, stated purpose for improving service safety.
• Available in common file formats (Excel XLS, CSV) for accessibility.

Limitations

• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.
• Row count and column-level documentation are absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.

Provenance

Source

Government Digital Service

Collection Method

Likely compiled from NHS administrative records.

Time Range

Temporal coverage is not specified in the provided metadata.

Freshness

Current version updated in February 2016; next update to be confirmed.

Geography

Spatial coverage is not specified, but the NHSOF framework suggests a United Kingdom focus.