Northern Lincolnshire and Goole Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust - Covid-19 Only Deaths

The request was successful.

Gabrielle Russo

Dear Northern Lincolnshire and Goole Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust,

Please provide answers to the following questions:

How many deaths each month did Northern Lincolnshire and Goole Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust record between January 2020 to date where COVID19 was the ONLY cause of death?

What was the age of those who died ONLY due to COVID19.

Yours faithfully,

Gabrielle Russo

foi (NORTHERN LINCOLNSHIRE AND GOOLE NHS FOUNDATION TRUST), Northern Lincolnshire and Goole Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

Dear Gabrielle

Thank you for your Freedom of Information request below.

Could we please ask you to consider withdrawing your request until a
further date to relieve pressure on our staff at this time? They are very
busy dealing with Wave 2 of the coronavirus pandemic which is, for our
Trust, much larger in its impact than Wave 1.

If you would still like us to answer then please note your request for
information may be delayed due to our urgent operational response to deal
with the pandemic. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause;  we
do remain committed to responding to your request and will respond as soon
as we are able. Should our response to your request breach the statutory
timeframe and you remain unhappy with our response you have the right to
complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office and you can contact them
at:

The Information Commissioner’s Office

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire

SK9 5AF

Tel: 0303 123 1113

Website: [1]www.ico.org.uk

There is no charge for making an appeal.

Please find the link to the ICO’s COVID-19 response

[2]https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/news-an...

Kind Regards

Freedom of Information Officer

Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust

[3][Northern Lincolnshire and Goole Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust request email]

 

 

 

 

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Dear foi (NORTHERN LINCOLNSHIRE AND GOOLE NHS FOUNDATION TRUST),

In addition to my initial request please supply monthly bed occupancies for the last five years to date for all Northern Lincolnshire and Goole Hospitals.

Yours sincerely,

Gabrielle Russo

foi (NORTHERN LINCOLNSHIRE AND GOOLE NHS FOUNDATION TRUST), Northern Lincolnshire and Goole Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

Dear Gabrielle

Thank you for your Freedom of Information request below.  We are treating
this as a new request.

Could we please ask you to consider withdrawing your request until a
further date to relieve pressure on our staff at this time? They are very
busy dealing with Wave 2 of the coronavirus pandemic which is, for our
Trust, much larger in its impact than Wave 1.

If you would still like us to answer then please note your request for
information may be delayed due to our urgent operational response to deal
with the pandemic. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause;  we
do remain committed to responding to your request and will respond as soon
as we are able. Should our response to your request breach the statutory
timeframe and you remain unhappy with our response you have the right to
complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office and you can contact them
at:

The Information Commissioner’s Office

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire

SK9 5AF

Tel: 0303 123 1113

Website: [1]www.ico.org.uk

There is no charge for making an appeal.

Please find the link to the ICO’s COVID-19 response

[2]https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/news-an...

Kind Regards

Freedom of Information Officer

Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust

03033 306078

 

[3][Northern Lincolnshire and Goole Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust request email]

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foi (NORTHERN LINCOLNSHIRE AND GOOLE NHS FOUNDATION TRUST), Northern Lincolnshire and Goole Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

 

Dear Gabrielle

 

Thank you for your Freedom of Information request below.

 

Information on the cause of death of patients is recorded on their fully
completed Medical Certificate Cause of Death (MCCD). The MCCD is a
document issued by a doctor and given to, and stored by, the appropriate
local registrar. This information is therefore held by the registrars and
not the Trust. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) does publish
statistics collated from MCCDs and this can be found from here:
[1]Coronavirus (COVID-19) - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk).

 

Kind regards

 

Adrian Beddow

Associate Director of Communications

Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust

03033 303035

[2][email address]

 

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Dear Northern Lincolnshire and Goole Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of Northern Lincolnshire and Goole Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust's handling of my FOI request 'Northern Lincolnshire and Goole Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust - Covid-19 Only Deaths'.

I do not believe that Northern Lincolnshire and Goole Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust does not hold the information that I have requested.

My request for bed occupancy was not addressed.

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/n...

Yours faithfully,

Gabrielle Russo

foi (NORTHERN LINCOLNSHIRE AND GOOLE NHS FOUNDATION TRUST), Northern Lincolnshire and Goole Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

Dear Gabrielle

 

Thank you for your email below requesting an internal review into your FOI
request dated 2^nd April 2021 (FOI 5956).

 

“How many deaths each month did  Northern Lincolnshire and Goole Hospitals
NHS Foundation Trust record between January 2020 to date where COVID19 was
the ONLY cause of death?

 

What was the age of those who died ONLY due to COVID19.”

.

We will respond to this within 20 working days.

 

This request did not include a question on bed occupancy – that is a
separate request which we are still dealing with (FOI 5977) and will
respond to before the 14^th May.

 

Kind regards

 

Adrian Beddow

Associate Director of Communications

Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust

03033 303035

[1][email address]

 

 

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foi (NORTHERN LINCOLNSHIRE AND GOOLE NHS FOUNDATION TRUST), Northern Lincolnshire and Goole Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

 

Dear Gabrielle

 

Thank you for your Freedom of Information request below.

 

The information you are requesting is readily available on the NHS England
website and goes back to 2000 by following the link below.  We are
therefore relying on Section 21 – information accessible by other means.

[1]Statistics » Bed Availability and Occupancy Data – Overnight
(england.nhs.uk)

Kind regards

 

Adrian Beddow

Associate Director of Communications

Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust

03033 303035

[2][email address]

 

 

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HARRIS, Helen (NORTHERN LINCOLNSHIRE AND GOOLE NHS FOUNDATION TRUST), Northern Lincolnshire and Goole Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

1 Attachment

Dear Ms Russo

 

 

I am writing to you in response to your request for an internal review
following our answer to the FOI you submitted (our reference FOI 5956). 
 I apologise for the delay, as we have been awaiting, and then
considering, a response from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO)
regarding a similar query from someone else.  This person referred us to
the ICO as they were not satisfied with how we had responded to them.  You
can read the ICO’s response here [1]ic-84975-h0j8.pdf (ico.org.uk).  As
you will see the complaint was not upheld and the Commissioner accepted
the Trust properly applied section 12 (Cost of compliance exceeds the
appropriate limit) of the FOI Act in that case.  However, the Commissioner
has also ruled that we should be in contact with people asking for this
information (under Section 16 of the FOI Act) to provide advice on what
information we may be able to provide.

 

 

We responded to your request in the way we did because our view at the
time was the complete information regarding cause of death was held by the
Registrar.  Our records may – or may not – be complete.  The only way we
would know this would be by looking at all the death certificate
information we have for the time period in question and, because this is a
large number of patients it would take a long time, and Section 12 of the
FOI Act would therefore be applicable.  However, we have changed our
record keeping around COVID-19 patient deaths at Grimsby.  Our previous
approach is described in the decision notice from the ICO.  We have also
been in touch with the mortuary office at Scunthorpe and they have
undertaken some work on recording deaths too.  As a result of this change
in approach, we now have the death certificate information available from
1 January 2021 through to 28 May 2021.  We have collected where COVID-19
has been recorded on the death certificate – whether that is in Part 1(a),
1(b), 1(c) or Part 2.  We have also identified instances where COVID-19 is
the only cause written on death certificates and have a record of the age
of those patients.  We have this information for both Grimsby and
Scunthorpe and split by month. The information relates to 97 of the circa
450 COVID-19 deaths the Trust has recorded in total.

 

 

I write to ask you whether the information I have set out meets your
needs.  If it does then please let me know and I will provide it to you.
 If it does not, then can you provide details on what information you
would like?  We can then assess whether it would be possible, within the
time limits, to provide it.  To help you decide we have estimated
collating the information for January 2021 to May 2021 has taken around 16
hours.  This is because the process of collecting information at
Scunthorpe meant, until recently, we had to review the information we held
related to every single death, both COVID-19 related and those not
related.  It is worth pointing out there have been zero deaths in some
months of 2021 and therefore the task has been simplified and this will
not be the case for any month between March 2020 and December 2020.  To
retrospectively review the total number of deaths which occurred in 2020
would still mean the cost of compliance exceeds the appropriate limit and
Section 12 would apply.

 

 

I look forward to hearing from you.

 

 

Helen Harris

Director of Corporate Governance

Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust

03033 304982

[email address]

 

[2]Speak Up month gets underway - NHS Employers

 

 

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Gabrielle Russo

Dear HARRIS, Helen (NORTHERN LINCOLNSHIRE AND GOOLE NHS FOUNDATION TRUST),

Thank you for your response of 27 May 2021.

I am quite shocked that you have kept such poor records of covid deaths. I would have thought this would have been an extremely high priority and such data should be readily available.

I am confused by your response. Initially you said that the data I requested was readily available on the ONS website? I would be grateful if you would clarify that assumption.

Yours sincerely,

Gabrielle Russo

HARRIS, Helen (NORTHERN LINCOLNSHIRE AND GOOLE NHS FOUNDATION TRUST), Northern Lincolnshire and Goole Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

Thank you for your email. 

 

I am currently out of the office.

 

Please contact Alison Hurley:  [email address] or Sarah Meggitt:
[email address] if your email is of an urgent nature; or by telephone
on:  03033 304982.

Kind regards
Helen Harris
Director of Corporate Governance

 

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Gabrielle Russo

Dear Northern Lincolnshire and Goole Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of Northern Lincolnshire and Goole Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust's handling of my FOI request 'Northern Lincolnshire and Goole Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust - Covid-19 Only Deaths'.

You have failed to respond in allotted time.

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/n...

Yours faithfully,

Gabrielle Russo

BEDDOW, Adrian (NORTHERN LINCOLNSHIRE AND GOOLE NHS FOUNDATION TRUST), Northern Lincolnshire and Goole Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

1 Attachment

Dear Ms Russo

 

Thank you for your response and apologies for my late reply. We have
followed the national guidance set out for trusts for reporting COVID-19
related deaths through the national system and also the guidance related
to completing death certificates during the pandemic. The Trust’s view is
the legal record of the cause of death of patients is their fully
completed Medical Certificate Cause of Death (MCCD). Therefore, to fully
understand the information regarding the cause of death of patients
recorded as having a positive COVID-19 test result would mean reviewing
the details of each of their MCCDs. The Trust did not record these details
in an electronic system which makes them easily searchable. Therefore a
thorough review would need to be undertaken by Trust staff to collate and
verify the information we do have. This would take longer than 18 hours
and we have applied Section 12 of the FOI Act (Cost of Compliance Exceeds
Appropriate Limit) as an exemption from answering this request in the
past. The Information Commissioner’s Office has found Section 12 has been
applied correctly by the Trust. Therefore this work has NOT been completed
for every death.

 

As stated in our previous response the Trust has continued to work to
provide what information it can given the high level of public interest in
the questions you (and others) have asked. During the time between your
original question and today this work means we can now provide you with
information from the system which is used to record and publish COVID-19
related deaths on a daily basis. This shows eight patients have died at
the Trust within 28 days of a positive COVID-19 test and had no underlying
health conditions recorded on that system. Five of these eight were female
and three were male. We have collected where COVID-19/coronavirus has been
recorded on the death certificate – whether that is in Part 1(a), 1(b),
1(c). The definitions of these elements of the MCCD are:

o Part 1(a)          Disease or condition leading directly to death
o Part 1(b)          Other disease or condition, if any, leading to 1(a)
o Part 1(c)          Other disease or condition, if any, leading to 1(b)

 

The information in Part 1 of each of these eight patients’ MCCDs is set
out in the table below along with some details of their ages. We have not
provided exact details of their ages, linked these deaths to whether they
are male or female or provided specific months or location of death as we
believe this may make them identifiable (please note that low-level
analyses are more likely to contain small numbers, which might facilitate
identification of individual patients, especially at a local level).

 

Age range Part 1(a) Part 1(b) Part 1(c)
91-100 Coronavirus Disease 19    
71-80 Respiratory Failure Covid-19  
91-100 Coronavirus    
81-90 Covid-19 Pneumonitis    
71-80 multi organ failure, Sepsis, Covid 19 pneumonia
31-40 Pulmonary embolism DVT Covid 19
71-80 Bilaterial Covid pneumonia    
51-60 Covid 19 Pneumonia    

 

In relation to your last point our initial response to your request stated
numbers related to death certificate information are available on the ONS
website. This was to signpost to what information is available about
deaths in the local area, not necessarily deaths in the Trust. If you are
unhappy with the way this clarification has been handled you can again
contact:

 

Helen Harris

Director of Corporate Governance

Diana Princess of Wales Hospital

Grimsby

DN33 2BA

Email: [1][email address]

 

Or, if you remain dissatisfied with the handling of your request or
complaint, you have a right to appeal to the Information Commissioner at:

 

The Information Commissioner’s Office

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire

SK9 5AF

 

Tel: 0303 123 1113

Website: [2]www.ico.org.uk

 

There is no charge for making an appeal.

 

Kind regards

 

Adrian

 

 

Adrian Beddow

Associate Director of Communications and Engagement

Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust

Telephone: 03033 303035

 [3]sig

 

 

 

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