Compendium: Mortality

In 2022 NHS Digital consulted users about the Compendium Mortality. Information about the consultation and its findings can be found on the Consultation 2022 page.

In response to the findings of that consultation NHS England considered that  the Fingertips tool , produced by the Office of Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) within the Department of Health and Social care (DHSC) had benefits for users of the Compendium Mortality publication. It provides some charts and data views as well as the ability to download data and definitions, and already includes a group of mortality indicators. It is also used by public health analysts, a key user of the Compendium Mortality publication. Putting more mortality indicators in the same place would be helpful to many users of these data.

We discussed expanding the existing group of mortality indicators in their Fingertips tool with the Office of Health Improvement and Disparities to include indicators in the Compendium Mortality publication that were not currently in Fingertips. They agreed that they would be able to expand their work and publication to cover many of the Compendium indicators and conditions.   

On 6th February the Office of Health Improvement and Disparities published an update to the Mortality Profile - OHID (phe.org.uk).  The new indicators included are listed here Mortality Profile Commentary February 2024 appendix - GOV.UK(www.gov.uk).

Consequently, NHS England proposes to stop up updating the Mortality Compendium on the NHS England website. This proposal has been included in the wider consultation about changes to health and social care statistical products published by:

• the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) including the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID)
• the NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA)
• the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA)
• the Office for National Statistics (ONS)
• NHS England (NHSE)

See Health and Social Care Statistical Outputs Consultation/mortality for more details.  This consultation closed on 5th March 2024.

Please see the individual publications for information on each set

As of July 2022,  users should also be aware of the following:

* ONS Data Source

ONS mortality data relating to the 2020 calendar year is the primary underlying data source of the indicator set.  The previous two releases of these indicators used 2019 and 2018 data respectively, however, prior to this it was based on 2015 ONS mortality data.

From 2016 onwards, mortality counts within the Compendium Mortality Indicator set are based on a bespoke extract taken from the Primary Care Mortality Database (PCMD) maintained by NHS Digital.  PCMD is updated monthly using a file of death records from ONS and is continually subject to amendment. 

It is already well established that late registrations have a small impact on counts.  This bespoke extract may be taken at a different time to that of the mortality data published by ONS and as such, this may cause some small differences between ONS and NHS Digital mortality figures for a given year.

Please note that two indicators within the 'Mortality from skin cancers other than malignant melanoma' publication have been permanently excluded from the 2017 refresh onwards.  This is due to a substantial number of deaths from "squamous cell carcinoma where no site was specified" having been miscoded at source to International Classification of Diseases (ICD10) code C449 "Other and unspecified malignant neoplasm of skin, unspecified" which resulted in a substantial artificial step change in the series for both 2016 and 2017 and had the potential to mislead if published.

ONS are aware of the issue and have indicated that it will be resolved for the 2018 release.  For each of the affected indicators, the versions based on the 2015 refresh remain available to download in the interim.

* Granularity of crude rates

Where crude rates are included for a dataset, these are now only presented for national and regional breakdowns while the disclosure control methodology is reviewed.

The methodology that was previously applied was calculated using rounded numerator and denominator values which resulted in published values which were imprecise and potentially misleading. This was especially the case where there were small counts and any variation could result in a significant increase in crude rate where one didn't exist and so could potentially result in invalid conclusions.