Metadata for Hospital stays for alcohol related harm

What is being measured?	Hospital Admissions for Alcohol Related Harm: NI39.
Why is it being measured?	The acute or long term effects of excessive alcohol consumption are a major cause of avoidable hospital admissions. This indicator may help to monitor likely health care burden
How is this indicator actually defined?	Hospital Admissions for Alcohol Related Harm (2007/08), directly age and sex standardised rate, all ages, admissions per 100,000 European Standard population.
Who does it measure?	All admissions, all ages
When does it measure it?	Continually reported and updated every year
Will It measure absolute numbers or proportions?	Proportions: numbers of case per hundred thousand European standard population
Where does the data actually come from?	Collection and collation from Hospital Episode Statistics via the DH
How accurate and complete will the data be?	HES Data and ONS population statistics are considered to be complete and robust
Are there any caveats/warnings/problems?	Hospital admission data can be coded differently in different parts of the country.
Are particular tests needed such as standardisation, significance tests, or statistical process control to test the meaning of the data and the variation they show?	The data point is green or red when the figure in a local authority is statistically significantly better or worse respectively than the England average, based on the 95% confidence intervals of the figure compared to the England value.