Freedom of Information Request: 0744 2020/21

I am writing to you under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to request the following information from University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust, separated by the hospitals within your trust. If that division of the numbers by all the hospitals within your trust exceeds the cost of compliance limits identified in section 12, please provide the numbers for the trust overall, as well as for Queen Elizabeth Hospital, specifically:

• 2019 (if not available, 2018) surgical volumes of implantable heart assist systems (see attached excel file for detailed descriptions) 
• For each procedure also information on the volumes of the specific device implanted (brand/ manufacturer), as well as surgical volume of open/percutaneous approach (also specified in the excel file attached).

Please note the information on surgical volumes of implantable heart assist systems is for Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham only – our codes did not report any figures from Heartlands, Good Hope and Solihull Hospitals, this may be due to the difference in systems used across sites.

Furthermore, our Health Informatics systems do not hold information on the type of device implanted (brand/manufacturer), this may be held in patient records; to go through patient records to retrieve this information would likely take in excess of 18 hours.

Section 12 of the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act makes provision for public authorities to refuse requests for information where the cost of dealing with them would exceed the appropriate limit, which for local government is set at £450. This represents the estimated cost of one person spending more than 18 hours in determining whether the department holds the information, locating, retrieving and extracting the information.

Therefore we are withholding this information under S12 of the Freedom of Information Act (2000)

• Please note the below data is for inpatient beds for the entire hospital

This information is publically available through the KH03 Submission

University Hospitals Birmingham’s organisation code is ‘RRK’ – please note we do not record this information per hospital

We are therefore withholding this information under Section 21 (Information already Accessible) of the Freedom of Information Act (2000)

https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/bed-availability-and-occupancy/bed-data-overnight/

https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/bed-availability-and-occupancy/bed-data-day-only/

• Number of HCPs (Cardiology)
  Please note our system does not hold this detail with regards to therapy staff

• QEHB HVAD

*We do not hold information about device names or manufacturers in a way that can be easily retrieved – we are therefore withholding this information under Section 12 of the FOI Act, please see above for full details.