Hospital Accident & Emergency Activity 2019-20

This is a series of high-level summary reports of NHS Accident and Emergency activity and performance of hospitals in England, during 2019-20 and as a comparison over time.

This is a joint report between NHS Digital and NHS England providing a collective and coherent message between the two organisations. This enables a wider set of breakdowns and measures in the detailed reports. This annual publication is available in advance of the winter period.

The data sources for this publication are:

• Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) and
• A&E Attendances and Emergency Admissions Monthly Situation Reports (MSitAE)

Both sets of data are submitted by NHS providers on a monthly basis to NHS Digital and NHS England and NHS Improvement respectively. The MSitAE data is an aggregate dataset submitted shortly after month end and is used to monitor activity and performance levels. The HES data is patient level record based data which is aggregated and thus anonymised for subsequent analysis. We explore within this report both the similarities and differences between the two data sources.

Planned A&E attendances are excluded, unless otherwise stated.

This publication includes detailed tables at a national level with further breakdowns included in each table.

The tables include:

• data completeness and comparison with other data sources
• attendance by category
• attendance by assessment, diagnosis and treatment
• duration and disposal
• patient group
• attendance by Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) and ethnicity
• clinical quality indicators

In addition to national aggregations of activity a provider-level analysis is supplied; this allows users to select hospital providers and compare activity with peer organisations, regions or the England total.

One of the purposes of the provider-level analysis is to contribute to the improvement of both the quality and coverage of the data submitted to HES.

This provides information at provider level (where submitted) relating to:

• gender
• age group
• hour of arrival
• day of arrival
• method of arrival by age group
• comparison with attendances recorded in A&E MSitAE
• duration
• method of discharge
• method of discharge by duration
• average length of stay by hour of arrival
• Full time equivalent (FTE) figures for NHS Trust Staff (Workforce data)
• Stability Index for Staff for NHS Trusts (Workforce data)

For the third year running, an additional file has been published providing supplementary information to this report that provides a comparison of the number of unplanned A&E attendances, 4 hour and 12 hour waiting time performance for each of the four home nations (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland). To compare across all nations this comparison is for Type 1 or Major A&E departments within each nation.

See separate section 'Home Nations Comparative Analysis' for further details.