National Audit of Inpatient Falls 2020: Hospital Facilities Data from England

England's National Audit of Inpatient Falls (NAIF) data from March 2020, reported in an Interim Annual Report published in May 2021. The dataset provides information on hospital facilities to identify areas for improving care for patients who sustain an inpatient hip fracture. Data collection was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, making submission non-mandatory and leading to a split publication of facilities and clinical data.

Use Cases

• Benchmarking hospital facility standards for fall prevention based on the national audit framework.
• Analyzing trends in inpatient fall incidents and related hip fractures based on the reported annual figures.
• Identifying systemic areas for quality improvement in patient care based on the audit's stated purpose.

Strengths

• Focuses on a critical patient safety issue, with 247,000 falls reported annually in England according to NHS Improvement.
• Provides a national-level view from a structured audit process conducted in 2020.
• Published under a permissive CC-BY-4.0 license, allowing for reuse and analysis.

Limitations

• Row count and specific column-level documentation are unknown, which limits suitability assessment.
• Data collection was made non-mandatory in April 2020 due to the pandemic, potentially affecting completeness.
• The dataset represents only the facilities audit component; clinical data was published separately.

Provenance

Source

Government Digital Service, via the eu_open_data platform.

Collection Method

National audit data collected from hospital facilities.

Time Range

Facilities audit data collected from March to August 2020.

Freshness

Data is from a 2020 audit, with the report published in May 2021. Last update date is unknown.

Geography

England (based on the reference to NHS Improvement and inpatient falls in England).