epidm (version 1.0.6)

hospital_in_out_dates: Hospital IN/OUT dates

Description

Derives per‑patient hospital entry (hospital_in) and exit (hospital_out) dates by reconciling A&E (ECDS) attendances and inpatient (HES/SUS) spells. Applies a simple ranking to determine the most relevant hospital period around an index event date (e.g., a specimen collection date).

"1"

Current admissions take priority

"2"

When conflicting on the same day, inpatient admissions take priority over A&E emergency care data

"3"

Where a patient has a linked A&E admission to a hospital inpatient stay, the A&E admission date is used

"4"

Where a patient has a positive test between two hospital stays the most recent completed hospital stay prior to the test is retained except if the time between these events is greater than 14 days, then the first admission following the test is retained

Usage

hospital_in_out_dates(
  data,
  person_id = "id",
  hospital = list(org_code = "organisation_code_of_provider", event_date = "ev_date",
    ae_arrive = "arrival_date", ae_depart = "departure_date", ae_discharge =
    "ecds_discharge", in_spell_start = "spell_start_date", in_spell_end =
    "spell_end_date", in_discharge = "discharge_destination")
)

Value

A data.table equal to data with additional columns:

hospital_in

Derived hospital admission date for the relevant stay.

hospital_out

Derived hospital discharge date for the relevant stay.

hospital_event_rank

Rank of suitability of the hospital window for the given person/event (1 = most suitable).

Arguments

data

A linked table containing A&E and inpatient records (typically the output of link_ae_inpatient()), including person/event identifiers and date fields.

person_id

Quoted column name for the unique patient identifier.

hospital

A named list specifying column names (all quoted) for:

org_code

Organisation code (optional; used to scope grouping).

event_date

Index date to compare against (e.g., specimen_date).

ae_arrive

ECDS arrival date.

ae_depart

ECDS departure date.

ae_discharge

ECDS discharge status (use grouped values if available).

in_spell_start

Inpatient spell start date.

in_spell_end

Inpatient spell end date.

in_discharge

Inpatient discharge destination (grouped recommended).

Workflow context

Use hospital_in_out_dates() after:

• Linking A&E to inpatient spells (e.g., via link_ae_inpatient()),

• Constructing spells (e.g., group_time() or cip_spells()),

• Optional code standardisation (e.g., discharge groups via lookup_recode())

See Also

epidm::lookup_recode()

epidm::group_time()

epidm::cip_spells()