Publication, Part of Health and Care of People with Learning Disabilities

Health and Care of People with Learning Disabilities, Experimental Statistics 2021 to 2022

Experimental statistics, Other reports and statistics, Official statistics in development

Publication Date:: 8 Dec 2022
Geographic Coverage:: England
Geographical Granularity:: Regions, Sub-Integrated Care Boards
Date Range:: 01 Apr 2017 to 31 Mar 2022

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Coverage and Prevalence

Data Quality Notice

NHS England had identified an issue with the data for the following indicator which was reported in the Interactive Visualisation Tool and the data csv file for this publication:

LDOB080 - Number of patients recorded on their general practice’s Learning Disabilities Register aged 14 years or over who have received an annual learning disability health check and have been provided with a health action plan, as at the end of the reporting period.

The proportion of people on the learning disability register with a heath check and health action plan was lower than expected. We have investigated the issue and found an error in the data extraction. We have therefore removed LDOB080 from the published Power BI and csv files for years 2019-20 through to 2024-25. An alternative source of this data is available for this indicator and we recommend that you refer to the Learning Disability Health Check Scheme publication for March 2022: Learning Disabilities Health Check Scheme - NHS England Digital

13 May 2026 16:41 PM

Summary

The aim of this publication is to provide information about the key differences in healthcare between people with a learning disability and those without. It contains aggregated data on key health issues for people who are recorded by their GP as having a learning disability, and comparative data about a control group who are not recorded by their GP as having a learning disability.

The following changes have been implemented for the 2021-22 reporting year:

• Four new indicators were introduced. Two of these relate to autism and colorectal cancer screening, and two relate to autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

More information on these changes can be found in the Data Quality section of this publication. Data has been collected from participating practices using EMIS and Cegedim Healthcare Systems (formerly Vision) GP systems.

The outbreak of Coronavirus (COVID-19) has led to unprecedented changes in the work and behaviour of GP practices and consequently the data in this publication may have been impacted, including indicators and contextual data from patients registered at a GP Practice. The data is extracted through the General Practice Extraction Service (GPES) therefore the burden of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak has not affected the collection of data for this publication. Caution should be taken in drawing any conclusions from this data without due consideration of the circumstances relating to the COVID-19 pandemic both locally and nationally during the reporting period and NHS Digital would recommend that any use of this data is accompanied by an appropriate caveat.

Highlights

England, 2021-22

Coverage

55.7% of patients registered in England in 2021-22 were included in this publication.

Learning disability prevalence

0.5% of the patients included in this publication were recorded by their GP as having a learning disability in 2021-22.

Autism prevalence

The percentage of patients who had a learning disability and have been diagnosed with Autism had a statistically significant increase each year from 21.4% in 2017-18 to 30.7% in 2021-22.

The percentage of patients without a learning disability who have a diagnosis of Autism has increased by 0.3 percentage points to 0.9% over the same period.

Health Checks

71.8% of patients with a learning disability had a Learning Disability Health Check in 2021-22, a statistically significant increase from 58.8% in 2017-18. However, this is a statistically significant decrease of 3.4 percentage points from 75.2% in 2020-21.

Cancer screening

The percentage of female patients aged 50 to 69 who had a breast cancer screening test decreased in both cohorts between 2017-18 and 2021-22. For patients without a learning disability this fell by 2.2 percentage points and similarly for those with a learning disability by 2.2 percentage points.

Statistically significant increases in colorectal cancer screening rates between 2020-21 and 2021-22 were observed amongst patients with learning disabilities and patients without learning disabilities. The percentage of patients aged 60 to 74 who had a colorectal cancer screening test increased from 43.3% to 50.3% amongst patients with learning disabilities, and from 62.7% to 66.8% amongst patients without learning disabilities.

Prescribing - antipsychotics

The percentage of patients with a learning disability who were prescribed antipsychotics decreased each year between 2017-18 (15.5%) and 2021-22 (14.5%), with a statistically significant decrease between 2017-18 and 2021-22.

Patients without a learning disability who were prescribed antipsychotics has remained stable at 0.9% over the same period.

Prescribing - benzodiazepines

The percentage of patients with a learning disability who were prescribed benzodiazepines decreased each year between 2017-18 (7.6%) and 2021-22 (7.1%), with a statistically significant decrease between 2017-18 and 2021-22.

Patients without a learning disability who were prescribed benzodiazepines mirrored this pattern over the same period, falling from 2.4% in 2017-18 to 1.8% in 2021-22; a statistically significant decrease.

Prescribing - epilepsy drugs

The percentage of patients with a learning disability who were prescribed epilepsy drugs without an active diagnosis of epilepsy decreased from 5.5% in 2017-18 to 4.9% in 2021-22; a statistically significant decrease.

The percentage of patients without a learning disability who were prescribed epilepsy drugs without a diagnosis of epilepsy has remained stable at 2.4% in the period 2017-18 to 2021-22.