National Psychiatric Inpatient Reporting System (NPIRS)

Data Collection Type
National data collections of health and social care in Ireland
Organisation

Health Research Board, National Health Information Systems

Year established

1963 — established after the recommendations of the report of the Commission of Enquiry on Mental Illness (Department of Health, 1966). 1971 — it has been maintained by the Medico-Social Research Board (MSRB) and subsequently, the HRB.

Statement of purpose

The National Psychiatric Inpatient Reporting System (NPIRS) is a psychiatric database which provides detailed information on all admissions and discharges to inpatient psychiatric services in Ireland.

Coverage

All centres approved under the Mental Health Act 2001 including private psychiatric hospitals and child and adolescent units.

Description

The database records all admissions to, discharges from and deaths in Irish psychiatric units and hospitals on the register of Approved Centres, under the Mental Health Act 2001. The annual reports produced from the database play a key role in the service planning and service delivery. National and regional bulletins capturing data for the HSE areas, along with an inpatient census carried out every three years, are also produced from the database. The database also provides much of the data on performance indicators (PIs) for the mental health services which are used to monitor targets in certain keys areas of the services.

Data content

Data collected includes demographic and clinical information relating to all admissions, discharges and deaths for Irish psychiatric units and hospitals.
Demographic information includes gender; age; marital status; address and socio-economic group. 
Clinical information includes: International Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, Tenth Revision (ICD-10) admission and discharge primary and secondary diagnosis. 
Other information includes: legal status on admission and reason for discharge; date of admission and discharge are also collected.

Data providers

All Approved Centres under the Mental Health Act 2001.

Data collection methodology

Data are collected by each hospital/Approved Centre upon admission/discharge of a patient and returned to the NPIRS team in the National Health Information Systems of the HRB. Data are returned electronically or manually (paper-based).

Data dictionary

Data are collected by each hospital/Approved Centre upon admission/discharge of a patient and returned to the NPIRS team in the National Health Information Systems of the HRB. Data are returned electronically or manually (paper-based).

Clinical coding scheme

The Clinical coding scheme is the WHO International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10).

Size of national collection

Approximately 18,000 admission records and 18,000 discharge records created on average.

Publication frequency

Approximately 18,000 admission records and 18,000 discharge records created on average.

Accessing data

Annual reports plus Community Healthcare Organisations (CHO) bulletins and a national bulletin are published. In addition, quarterly PI reports are produced for the HSE on selected mental health indicators on the database. Excel tables are available on the HRB website and data is available on request. Data is also available on the Public Health Information System and interactive tables are available on www.cso.ie.

Open data portal access

No

Email contact
Telephone contact
Other comments

Currently being redeveloped as part of the HRB LINK project.