Accident and Emergency Attendances in England (Experimental Statistics), 2007-08

This is the first publication of the accident and emergency (A&E;) attendance data within Hospital Episodes Statistics (HES). It covers the period April 2007 to March 2008 and draws on over 12.3 million detailed records of attendances at major A&E; departments, single specialty A&E; departments, minor injuries units and walk-in centres in England.

Publishing the A&E; HES data for the first time, as experimental statistics, enables initial conclusions to be presented for discussion and aims to promote and highlight the uses of this potentially rich data set.

During the period covered by this publication, not all NHS trusts have completed data submissions and data quality is poor in some cases. The publication also includes analysis of the A&E; HES data compared to the Quarterly Monitoring of Accident and Emergency (QMAE) return, the official source of A&E; information, to highlight areas for further investigation.

Key facts

• This is the first publication of record level national A&E; attendance data from this data set within HES.
• A&E; HES data contains 12.3 million accident and emergency attendances from April 2007 to March 2008 at major A&E; departments, single specialty A&E; departments, walk-in centres and minor injury units in England.
• Data are incomplete; there are 11.9 million attendances reported in A&E; HES excluding planned follow-up returns, compared to 19.1 million reported in Quarterly Monitoring of Accident and Emergency (QMAE) aggregate data for the equivalent period.
• There are 253 providers that have submitted A&E; attendances via QMAE compared to 148 providers with attendances in A&E; HES.
• Of the 105 providers that have no attendances showing under A&E; HES data, 81 of them are primary care trusts (PCTs)
• When comparing providers that have submitted attendances in both A&E; HES data and QMAE, A&E; HES has 1.9 million or 13.5% fewer attendances.
• Of the recorded figures, Monday has a higher number of A&E; attendances than any other day of the week.
• Of the recorded figures, people between the ages of 20 and 29 had more A&E; attendances than those in any other ten-year age band.

Please note: Tables included in appendix three and four, which compare A&E; attendances and duration times in HES against QMAE data, contained 22 incorrect provider codes against their provider names, these have now been corrected.

All the figures in both tables were accurate against their provider names, it was only the provider codes that were wrongly aligned to their provider names.

Providers that previously contained incorrect provider codes are; East Kent Hospitals NHS Trust, East Sussex Hospitals NHS Trust, Eastern and Coastal Kent PCT, North Middlesex University Hospital NHS Trust, North Somerset PCT, North Staffordshire PCT, North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust, North West London Hospitals NHS Trust, Northern Devon Healthcare NHS Trust, Northern Lincolnshire and Goole Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, South Devon Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, South Staffordshire PCT, South Tees Hospitals NHS Trust, South Tyneside NHS Foundation Trust, South Warwickshire General Hospitals NHS Trust, Southampton University Hospitals NHS Trust, Southend University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Southport and Ormskirk Hospital NHS Trust, West Suffolk Hospitals NHS Trust, West Sussex PCT and Weston Area Health NHS Trust.

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