Hospital Accident & Emergency Activity 2020-21

This section reports how the distribution of reattendances varies with the day of the week, age and gender for 2020-21. All reattendances are defined to be within 7 days of the patient’s first attendance, either to the same or another A&E department, and over 4 hours to exclude transfers between organisations.

The reason for the initial attendance and subsequent reattendance(s) have not been compared to assess whether they are related or not.

The results are presented as:

• Annual total of patients who have reattended A&E over the last 10 years

• Day of the week of the patient’s first attendance of those that have reattended

• Age and gender of patients who have reattended

From 2011-12 to 2019-20 the number of reattendances to A&E increased year on year but has fallen by just over a quarter from 1,950,000 in 2019-20 to 1,390,000 for 2020-21.

However the proportion of reattendances makes of all A&E attendances  has increased from just under 9 per cent to just over 10 per cent from 2019-20 to 2020-21.

The percentage of reattendances, as a proportion of first attendances, is very consistent over each day of the week varying a maximum of half a percent between any particular day in the week.

Males have a higher proportion of reattendances than females for all age groups, with the exception of those between 10 to 29 years of age.

Females between 20 to 29 years of age have the highest overall rate of reattendance across any age/gender group with a steady decrease in the ensuing age bands.

Males between 30 to 49 years of age have the highest rate of reattendance amongst men and the decrease is smaller in the ensuing age bands.

These trends could be linked to patterns of admissions, for example older people may be more likely to be admitted and conversely less likely to need to return to A&E within seven days.

Excludes attendances where patient gender is unknown.