This field contains a code which identifies previous psychiatric care for psychiatric patients. It applies only to patients admitted or transferred to a consultant in one of the psychiatric specialties during a spell in hospital. It is recorded for the first such consultant episode but not for subsequent psychiatric consultant episodes or any non-psychiatric episodes. This field is used to indicate the turnover for psychiatric patients, and identify first time psychiatric admissions and re-admissions. Where a patient has a history of admission to several hospital providers, priority is given to the current hospital provider (code 1), regardless of whether the preceding admission was to the same hospital provider. This field replaces special (UK NHS specific) diagnosis codes commencing U69 (1 April 1989 to 31 March 1995) and U51 (1 April 1995 to 31 march 1996), and also the HES derived V code indicator data item.

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