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- BLOG - Access to secure data during the Covid-19 pandemic - a model for the future?
- Covid-19 and Care Homes: Advances in Administrative Data Research during the pandemic
- DATA INSIGHTS -Deprivation and informal care at the end of life
- BLOG - Reflections on engaging with children & young people about data
- NEWS - Innovative new residential linkage tool launched
- BLOG SERIES - Dramatic increase in deaths at home- No.4
- DATA INSIGHTS - Youth Movements, Social Mobility and Health Inequalities
- NEWS - New report warns of deepening poverty crisis for Scottish families
- New report on Infants Born into Care in Scotland
- Spotlight on Dr Elizabeth Lemmon
- Spotlight on Jan Savinc
- BLOG - Covid-19 fines in Scotland: What we know so far
- BLOG - The value of social science and administrative data research in Scotland: how we are helping respond to COVID-19
- NEWS - Joining together with Research Data Scotland to co-host existing public panel on data
- DATA INSIGHTS - Exploring illegal drug consignments in Scotland
- DATA INSIGHTS -Linking two administrative data sets about looked after children
- NEWS - ADR UK grants 20 PhD studentship opportunities focused on quantitative research using linked administrative data
- NEWS – ADR Scotland data ambassadors launched
- Spotlight on Peter Christen
- The importance of administrative data
- Virtual Conference - Data Linkage: Information to Impact
- An Introduction to Data Science for Administrative Data Research course - March 2023
- BLOG SERIES - Dramatic increase in deaths at home - No.7
- BLOG SERIES - Dramatic increase in deaths at home
- BLOG SERIES - Dramatic increase in deaths at home- No.3
- DATA INSIGHTS - Investigating the effects of class composition and class size on pupils’ attainment in Scottish primary schools
- NEWS - New opportunity to join ADR Scotland’s Public Panel
- BLOG - Engaging the public through our public panel
- BLOG - Exploring the potential of synthetic data
- Children’s Health in Care in Scotland (CHiCS)
- DATA INSIGHTS - Automatic Coding of Occupations: Methods to create the Scottish Historic Population Database (SHPD)
- DATA INSIGHTS - Selective schools: do they improve health?
- DATA INSIGHTS - Were people who died at home less likely to attend hospital at the end of life during the Covid pandemic?
- EVENT - Active Travel: New Data, New Insights
- EVENT - Holyrood Evidence Week: Doing Data Better for Policy and Public Good
- EVENT - Unlocking criminal justice data in Scotland: Findings from Data First
- IPDLN Conference - Data linkage research: informing policy and practice
- NEWS - Making nursing data available to inform policy
- NEWS - New report on The Impact of Covid-19 on Children’s Care Journeys in Scotland: An Analysis of the Administrative Data on 'Looked After' Children
- NEWS - Updated report on Infants Born into Care in Scotland
- Scout and Guide participation boosts later life health
- BLOG - Geospatial Ambitions
- BLOG - Taking historical death records and developing a database for future analysis
- BLOG - Unlocking criminal justice data
- DATA INSIGHTS - Community mortality due to Covid-19
- DATA INSIGHTS - What makes people more likely to cycle to work?
- Future-proofing investment into administrative data research announced in Scotland
- NEWS - Understanding the dynamics of the nursing workforce: the potential of routinely collected data
- Spotlight on Joanna Soraghan
- Spotlight on Katherine Falconer
- Why misconceptions about population data can lead to bad outcomes
- ADR Scotland publishes its strategy for 2022-2026
- BLOG - Developing and re-shaping our public panel
- BLOG - Review of the recent DWP Areas of Research Interest Workshop
- BLOG: Developing a cross-national research agenda on crime and convictions
- BLOG: Working together to make a difference with data
- DATA INSIGHTS - Homelessness duration in Scotland: how long does rehousing take?
- DATA INSIGHTS - Occupation and COVID-19 deaths: Scotland in a comparative perspective
- DATA INSIGHTS -The health and economic benefits of active commuting in Scotland
- EVENT - ADR UK Conference 2023
- EVENT - RSE The secret world of data
- NEWS - New comic on children's rights and data
- NEWS - Report published on our children’s engagement pilot study
- NEWS - When did fines issued by the police for breaking Covid rules peak?
- Scotland’s portfolios: Research and Statistical Data - building a new approach to thematic data linkage
- Spotlight on Cecilia Macintyre
- Spotlight on Dr Evan Williams
- Spotlight on Fernando Pantoja
- Spotlight on Laurie Berrie
- ADR Scotland Winter Partnership Session - **internal event**
- BLOG - AGEING AND HOMELESSNESS IN SCOTLAND
- BLOG - Can we use linked administrative data to identify social disadvantage?
- BLOG - Commuting and its impact on health
- BLOG - The Dynamics of the Nursing Workforce in the UK: Using data to support our nurses
- BLOG: Growing up in kinship care
- Congratulations to Alastair McAlpine, the new Chief Statistician for Scottish Government
- DATA INSIGHTS - Analysing a season of death and excess mortality in Scotland’s past
- EVENT - ADR UK Virtual Half Day event
- EVENT - HDR UK Conference: Data for global health and society
- EVENT - Introduction to Data Science for Administrative Data Research course (IDS-ADR)
- Event - Public data for public good: towards better understanding children's lives
- NEWS - ADR Scotland's first flagship dataset
- NEWS - Data research initiative secures £90 m funding extension
- NEWS: Our role supporting the new Covid-19 research data service in Scotland
- Spotlight on Gina Anghelescu
- Spotlight on Michelle K Jamieson
- Webinar - An Introduction to Looked-After Children Dataset
- ADR Scotland Away Day (**for staff only**)
- BLOG - An Inside Job: Using Criminology, Police Data and a Lot of Nouse
- BLOG - Improving justice data to promote data justice in Scotland
- BLOG - Location of death in 2020: a changing trend from hospitals to homes
- BLOG - Reflecting on the ADR UK Conference: Insights from our new PhD Researchers
- BLOG - Seeking feedback on Research Data Scotland’s core principles via our public panel
- BLOG - What skills, training and support are required by those wishing a career as an administrative data researcher?
- BLOG No. 9 - Final blog in this 'deaths at home' series
- BLOG SERIES - Dramatic increase in deaths at home - No. 6
- BLOG SERIES - Dramatic increase in deaths at home - No.8
- BLOG SERIES - Dramatic increase in deaths at home- No.5
- BLOG: 5 things I've learnt about working with policymakers...
- BLOG: Automating Coding for Large Historical Datasets
- BLOG: COVID-19- How increased deaths at home impact the carer community
- DATA INSIGHTS -Postal deliveries of drugs in Scotland
- EVENT - 'Getting things done with data in government'
- EVENT - Linking public sector data for research: an ADR UK showcase event
- EVENT Seminar - Administrative data for social policy research: potential and pitfalls
- NEWS - ADR Scotland launches new podcast series
- NEWS - Additional funding for Understanding Children’s Lives and Outcomes
- NEWS - Engaging children and young people
- NEWS: Police use of Fixed Penalty Notices under the Covid-19 regulations in Scotland: A new data report highlights links with deprivation and inequality
- NEWS: Police use of the new Covid-19 powers: Using administrative data to analyse and evaluate practice
- Research Data Scotland - New user forum
- Spotlight on Dr Patricio Troncoso
- Spotlight on Renata Samulnik
- Summary of ADR Scotland Winter Partnership session
- Directorship of the International Population Data Linkage Network (IPDLN) for 2021-22.
- BLOG: In the light of experience: InterRAI and the final thousand days of life
- Multiple health conditions and social care
- NEWS - Susan McVie elected as Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences
- SCADR relocates to the Bayes Centre
- EVENT: Four day introduction to using administrative data for social and health research
- BLOG: The value of administrative data: DALYs and the Scottish Burden of Disease study
- BLOG: Where to start with parliamentary and policy engagement
- EVENT - International Conference on Administrative Data Research, Cardiff
- EVENT - Using data to realise the potential of the 'Last 1000 days'
- EVENT: TalkingData: ADR Scotland mini-summit
- EVENT: “Let’s use data to save time, money and lives”: ADR Scotland partners gather for mini-summit
- EVENTS: ADR Scotland researchers present at international conference in Cardiff
BLOG SERIES - Dramatic increase in deaths at home - No.8
This month we’ll be looking at the relative proportions of places of death over the years and how these differed between each of the fourteen NHS Scotland Health Boards.
Unlike our previous blogs, this time we’ve used interactive graphs, which you can access by using the embedded version below or clicking here: Plotly Proportion of Deaths by Place. They show a separate graph for each of the 14 NHS Scotland Health Boards, as well as highlighting each place or location of death, which are marked by one of four different colours:
- Hospitals = Navy
- Home & other non-institutions = Pink
- Care homes = Orange
- Other = Yellow
By clicking on each place or location of death in the graph header, it will add the different coloured lines to the graph, so you can view the statistics for each place of death within that region. By hovering your mouse on the lines for a region, the user can compare the percentages for each place of death within each NHS Scotland Health Board. The user can also compare the results of two Health Boards.
Scotland's deaths at home
In Scotland, deaths 'at home' currently represent a higher proportion of deaths than they did prior to the pandemic and their proportion has increased both from 2019 to 2020 and from 2020 to today. Conversely, the proportion of 'hospital' deaths decreased between 2019 and 2020, and then increased again a small amount in 2021, though to a level below its lowest in 2015. The proportion of 'care home' deaths increased by a small amount in 2020 and has increased in 2021. Note that because these are proportions of all deaths in a year, the large increase in 'care home' deaths that happened early in the pandemic in 2020 only shows as a modest increase in the proportion of 'care home' deaths.
Focusing on regional NHS Health Boards
There was a lot of variation between the 14 individual Scottish Health Boards. The general trend of gradually increasing the share of 'home' deaths and declining 'hospital' deaths holds across all regions, but there are a lot of differences in how high or low the shares were to begin with. Deaths at 'home' are higher than in 'care homes' almost everywhere except NHS Lothian.
Lothian 'care home' deaths outnumbered 'home' deaths until the pandemic in 2020. It’s only in 2021 that Lothian 'care home' deaths decreased sharply and we see a relatively large difference between 'care home' (20.7%) and 'home' deaths (31.9%).
Another interesting comparison is between NHS Highland and the Scottish Borders:
- NHS Highland had a high proportion of 'home' deaths (30%) in 2015 compared to the other Boards, and a low proportion of 'hospital' deaths (48.2%);
- NHS Borders had the opposite – high 'hospital' deaths (58.7%) and low 'home' deaths (23.4%), relative to the other regions;
- In Highland, 'home' deaths increased from 30% in 2015 to nearly 37% in 2021;
- In the Borders in 2015, 'home' deaths were 23% and increased to just under 30% in 2021 (at the level of the Highlands in 2015);
- Conversely, the proportion of 'hospital' deaths in Borders in 2021 at 47% was just under the 48% of 'hospital' deaths in Highlands in 2015.
Despite these differences, the 'home' deaths trendline is remarkably similar between them: a gradual increase in 'home' deaths between 2015-2019, with a big pandemic-related jump between 2019 and 2020.
You will notice from the graphs that NHS Borders is the only Scottish Health Board with a significant proportion of deaths happening in the 'Other' location category (shown in yellow). 'Other' locations normally include schools, prisons, and other institutions. In all other Health Board regions, deaths in 'Other' locations represent less than 1% of all deaths in a year. I am currently looking into why the Borders range between 2.1% and 11.4% , and what 'other' institutions located in the Borders might be included in that figure? As a non-native Scot who lives outwith the Scottish Borders, I would very much welcome suggestions and answers – and will write a blog on this topic in future!
Also, please note that for the Island Health Boards, the lines vary considerably more from year to year than in the other Boards. This is because the actual number of deaths is much smaller there than in the bigger Health Boards and so even a small increase or decrease in numbers shifts the proportion to a large degree. The share of home deaths in Western Isles, Shetland, & Orkney, have increased from 2015.
This article was published on 17 Nov 2021