Methodology change notice provision A&E quality indicators England by provider and provisional monthly hospital episode statistics data

From October 2017 urgent and emergency care started the migration for providers to submit data to the Emergency Care Data Set (ECDS) (CDS Type 011), thus no longer submitting data via the A&E Commissioning Data Set (CDS Type 010).

Between October 2017 and April 2020 ECDS data has been mapped back to A&E, as providers have migrated throughout this period, to maintain continuity for Official Statistics, parliamentary questions, commissioning analysis and research projects amongst other things.

From April 2019 all providers are mandated to submit data to ECDS, with the intention to no longer have ability to submit to the previous A&E dataset.

The Provisional Accident & Emergency Quailty Indicators have been redeveloped to be sourced from ECDS, not A&E. The specific Quality Indicators have not changed. However the report is now an interactive, visual tool, replacing the previous flat Excel table format.

The provisional monthly Hospital Episode Statistics for Accident and Emergency will be sourced from ECDS, not A&E. Again, the specific indicators will not change.

There will be a small number of providers who have not successfully migrated to ECDS, and there will also be some teething data quality issues, especially around new fields.

However the ECDS Quality Indicator report and monthly statistics are not using any of the new ECDS fields in earnest. ECDS data quality reports are published and will continue to report providers that have not migrated to ECDS:

ECDS will be the primary source of A&E data and the source of official activity and performance statistics. It will enable new analyses to be performed and new insight to be gleaned that the previous A&E dataset was unable to deliver.

Learn more about ECDS. 

The change will take effect from April 2020, and the first publications it will apply to will be released in June 2020.

If you have any comments or questions about this change please contact NHS Digital on 0300 303 5678 or email [email protected].