Table 2.

Annual illness consultation in primary care and unplanned and ambulatory care sensitive (ACS) hospital admission rates^a

Number of children in cohort	Infant (age < 1 year)	Preschool (age 1–4 years)	Primary school (age 5–9 years)	Asthma diagnosis (age 5–9 years)	Diabetes diagnosis (age 5–9 years)	Epilepsy diagnosis (age 5–9 years)
	N = 319,780	N = 289,989	N = 141,572	N = 12,654	N = 268	N = 670
Rate per child/year (95% confidence interval)
Illness consultationb	4.01 (4.00–4.03)	2.91 (2.90–2.92)	1.33 (1.32–1.34)	2.18 (2.15–2.22)	2.02 (1.81–2.23)	2.22 (2.06–2.39)
Rate per 1000 child-years (95% confidence interval)
Unplanned admissions	259 (256–261)	105 (104–107)	42 (40–44)	84 (77–91)	342 (279–405)	461 (365–558)
Infectious ACS admissions
URTI	26.6 (25.9–27.2)	19.7 (19.3–20.1)	6.5 (6.2–6.8)
LRTI	36.1 (35.3–36.9)	4.6 (4.4–4.8)	1.0 (0.9–1.1)
Gastroenteritis	23.3 (22.7–23.9)	10.5 (10.2–10.7)	2.2 (2.0–2.4)	Not measured	Not measured	Not measured
Urinary tract infection	6.5 (6.1–6.8)	1.9 (1.7–2.0)	0.9 (0.8–1.0)
Vaccine-preventable infections	0.7 (0.6–0.8)	0.07 (0.06–0.10)	(number too small to compute rate)
Chronic ACS admissionsc	N/A	N/A	N/A	26.0 (23.5–28.8)	193 (168–223)	178 (147–216)

^aCohort of 319,780 children born between 01/01/2000 and 31/03/2013 registered with 363 Clinical Practice Research Datalink practices linked to Hospital Episode Statistics in England, and followed up until 31/12/2013

^bIllness consultation: face-to-face consultation with a GP excluding preventive care

^cACS chronic admission rates (primary diagnosis at admission) in children aged 5–9 years diagnosed with ACS condition. We chose to analyse the age group alone because asthma cannot reliably be diagnosed in children aged less than 5 years

ACS ambulatory care sensitive, LRTI lower respiratory tract infection, URTI upper respiratory tract infection