Consultant Episode (Hospital Provider)

The time a patient spends in the continuous care of one consultant (or GP acting as a consultant) using hospital site or nursing home bed(s) of one health care provider or, in the case of shared care, in the care of two or more consultants. Where care is provided by two or more Consultants within the same episode, one Consultant will take overriding responsibility for the patient and only one Consultant Episode (Hospital Provider) is recorded. Additional Consultants participating in the care of the patient are defined as Shared Care Consultants

A consultant episode (hospital provider):

a.	Includes time spent as a lodged patient before admission to a ward (first episode only).
b.	May occur concurrently with consultant out-patient episodes.
c.	Is not interrupted by home leave.
d.	Must not overlap with a NURSING EPISODE (in which the patient's GP assumes responsibility for the patient's care) or a second consultant episode (hospital provider) for the same patient *.

See Nursing Episode

* Except in exceptional circumstances, see Discharge

Consultant transfer: occurs when the responsibility for a patient transfers from one consultant (or GP acting as consultant) to another within a hospital provider spell. In this case one consultant episode (hospital provider) will end and another one will begin.

A transfer of responsibility may occur while the patient remains in the same ward or nursing home:

a.	from a consultant to the patient's own GP for nursing care, the consultant episode (hospital provider) ends and a nursing episode begins.
b.	from the patient's own GP (for nursing care) to a consultant, the nursing episode ends and a consultant episode (hospital provider) begins.