Registered deaths

Date and cause of death based on information recorded when deaths are certified and registered in England and Wales.

Metadata

• Data provider Office for National Statistics.
• Participation / Coverage Deaths occurring in England and Wales, including non-residents.
• Provenance General Register Office.
• Update frequency in OpenSAFELY Approximately weeekly.
• Available from deaths recorded from February 2019 onwards.
• Delay between event occurring and event appearing in OpenSAFELY Approximately 1-2 weeks.
• Collected information Date of death, causes of death, age, sex, place of death.

Causes of death are coded using ICD-10.

More information

• Information collected at death registration
• User guide to mortality statistics
• Metadata

Glossary

• Underlying cause of death (icd10u) A cause code that identifies the medical condition judged to be the underlying cause of death according to the rules of the 10th Revision of the International Classification of Diseases. This field appears once for each cause coded routine and inquest death (deaths at age 28 days and over). This code is generally known as 'the cause of death' and is used in single cause tabulations and analyses. The death is assigned the ICD10U code on the basis of ICD-10 codes allocated to the death by the MICAR program. A coder may also manually assign these codes to a death record.
• Primary / secondary cause of death These are not concepts used in ONS cause of death data. There is the underlying cause, and then a list of up to 15 medical conditions (ICD10001 to ICD10015, given as ICD-10 codes) mentioned on the death certificate. These codes are not ordered meaningfully.