Data Collection
The Hospital Inpatient Enquiry (HIPE) collects demographic, clinical and administrative data on discharges from acute public hospitals in Ireland. Data are extracted from medical charts or records and coded according to ICD-10 by trained clinical coders.
Patients were deemed to have an unplanned VLU related admission if they had any non-elective admission, to any hospital within the Saolta group, with an appropriate primary diagnosis code over the period July 2014-July 2018. The codes for venous ulcer include “Varicose veins of lower extremities with ulcer”, and “Varicose veins of lower extremities with both ulcer and inflammation”.
Phlebitis alone without ulceration, and varicose veins without ulceration, are both coded elsewhere in the ICD-10 and were excluded. The two years immediately prior to the introduction of the one-stop see and treat clinic (July 2014 to June 2016) served as the control period.
Data on the clinic’s activity was gathered by a combination of prospective documentation as well as retrospective chart review for earlier patients.