Statistical processing

Source data

Reports from the municipalities and drug abuse treatment centers. From January 1, 2024, it is only mandatory to report for drug abuse offers that have authorization to report on behalf of a municipality.

Frequency of data collection

Municipalities and drug addiction treatment centers are obliged to report data on drug addiction treatment to Statistics Denmark on an ongoing basis, however no later than 15 days after the end of the month, cf. databekendtgørelsen. However, data is not always reported continuously. Therefore, Statistics Denmark sets a deadline for when municipalities and drug addiction treatment centers at latest must have reported, validated and approved their data. This deadline is communicated through a annual wheel via our information page and via email to all our contact persons.

Data collection

Direct reporting or system-to-system reporting via administrative IT-system to SMDB.

Data validation

As part of the data validation process, Statistics Denmark monitor whether or not we receive data during the year from municipalities and drug abuse treatment centers. In addition to missing data, there may be errors in the data reported by the municipalities and drug addiction treatment centers.

Statistics Denmark therefore attempt to ratify the data in dialogue with the municipalities and drug addiction treatment providers before the municipalities can finally approve the data when they estimate that the data is a realistic reflection of the drug addiction treatment that has been given throughout the year.

This is done more tangibly by sending validation reports to the municipalities at the beginning of the year, as well as continuously after dialogue and error corrections, where it e.g. it appears how many requests, initiatives, registrations for centers and citizens in treatment they have reported to Statistics Denmark for the four previous years. Here it is emphasized whether there has been an increase or a decrease in the reference year compared to the previous year. If there has been a large increase or decrease (over 20 per cent) and the municipality wishes to approve the data, Statistics Denmark will ask for an explanation of this. In addition, the validation report shows how many errors the municipality has. As a general rule, Statistics Denmark accepts a maximum margin of error of 20 per cent.

The municipalities are encouraged not only to correct errors for the year being validated, but all years, unless they are close to the deadline. In continuation of this, it can be added that Statistics Denmark is working to ensure that more municipalities approve their data backwards in time, so that it becomes possible to compare national totals across several years, and there are several municipalities that approve their data backwards in time.

Statistics Denmark is working on a solution where reporters log on to the database and are presented with an overview and errors on the front page instead of us sending validation lists in Excel. The purpose is to strengthen data security and make validation easier for reporters and Statistics Denmark.

Data compilation

After reporting data in SMDB, an age is calculated for the citizen at the time of the incident. The age appearing in the statistics bank is the citizen's age at the end of the census year, not when the citizen started treatment.

Only the municipalities that approve their data are included in the published figures.

It is only possible to report persons with a valid social security number. Anonymous persons in drug abuse treatment are not reported, and likewise foreigners who have not yet received a Danish social security number cannot be reported to SMDB. Due to the fact that this practice is also applicable in the published figures, invalid social security numbers are removed from the database before publication of the statistics. In previous years it has been possible to report invalid social security numbers, but this is no longer possible.

Previous analyzes of data from SMDB have shown that a large proportion of the active contact procedure in the database should have been ended. Since the data validation in 2016, there has been a focus on this. In addition, in connection with a municipality's system change (i.e. change from one administrative IT system to another or to manual reporting, see the "source data" section), a review of active cases takes place, so that the erroneously open cases are closed before the transition to the new system.

When calculating persons in either a course or persons with activity during the period, Statistics Denmark will limit that a person can only be counted once in the specified period. Statistics Denmark selects the most recent event for the person. Persons in active treatment may, however, be counted several times if they change municipality during a reference year.

Adjustment

When there are less than 10 days between two contact or treatment courses for the same citizen for the same municipality, the two courses are merged. This is done to account for municipalities that change IT-system.

Statistics Denmark has noted that the courses were not completely merged before, but this problem is now solved by and large. However, they are still not completely merged if there are multiple affiliations, but it is not considered a considerable problem.

Statistics Denmark encourages municipalities to switch systems according to a new model where system change correction is not necessary. Most system changes after 2022 have been made with the new model. The new model provides more accurate data. See the system change guide på vores oplysningsside on our information page.