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Publication, Part of

Hospital Outpatient Activity 2021-22

National statistics, Accredited official statistics

Publication Date:
29 Sep 2022
Geographic Coverage:
England
Geographical Granularity:
Strategic Health Authorities, Hospital Trusts, Independent Sector Health Care Providers, Regions, NHS Trusts, Country
Date Range:
01 Apr 2021 to 31 Mar 2022
Accredited official statistics logo.

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Hospital Outpatient Activity 2021-22

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Introduction

Consultation: proposed improvements to the Hospital Outpatient Activity publication

The data included within the 2022-23 release will remain the same or have minor changes to the publication series (Outpatients), details about the changes can be found within the consultation.

Please complete our consultation about the changes and share your feedback by 18th August 2023

Consultation for Hospital Outpatient Activity

18 August 2023 17:00 PM

Page contents

Summary

Please note, the data in the Provider Level Analysis file were updated on 04/11/2022 due to an issue identified with some of the counts in tables 1 and 8. Data in files downloaded before this date may not match what is shown now.

This is a report on outpatient activity in English NHS hospitals and English NHS-commissioned activity in the independent sector. This annual publication covers the financial year ending March 2022. It contains final data and replaces the provisional data that are published each month.

The data are taken from the Hospital Episodes Statistics (HES) data warehouse. HES contains records of all admissions, appointments and attendances for patients admitted to NHS hospitals in England.

This publication includes analysis of just over 122 million outpatient appointments recorded in HES data during the 12 month period. A number of breakdowns are provided including by patient's age, gender, whether the appointment was attended or not and by provider. Note that this report counts the number of outpatient appointments rather than the number of patients.

The purpose of this publication is to inform and support strategic and policy-led processes for the benefit of patient care. This document will also be of interest to researchers, journalists and members of the public interested in NHS hospital activity in England.

Highlights

Number of Outpatient Appointments

In 2021-22, there were 122.3 million outpatient appointments.

This is an increase of 20% from the previous year, and 2.1% decrease from the level seen before the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic (there were 124.9 million appointments in 2019-20).

Number of Outpatient Attendances

In 2021-22, there were 95.5 million outpatient attendances.

This is an increase of 22% from the previous year, and a 0.9% decrease from the level seen before the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic (there were 96.4 million attendances in 2019-20).

Number of 'Did Not Attends' for outpatient appointments

In 2021-22, 6.4% of outpatient appointments were DNAs. 

This is an increase of 15.6% from the previous year. 

Last edited: 7 July 2023 11:53 am