Emergency presentations

Emergency presentations are an important driver of cancer outcomes: patients with cancers that present as an emergency typically suffer significantly worse outcomes. The 2015-2020 cancer strategy for England recommended that the proportion of emergency presentations should be regularly reported and reviewed.

Find out more about the link between emergency presentations and outcomes.

This publication is an Official Statistic [note 1].

This publication presents the total number of patients first seen as an inpatient in hospital in England (denominator); the number of these patients who present as an emergency (numerator), and the proportion of these patients who present as an emergency (numerator/denominator presented as a percentage). This publication reports on quarterly counts and proportions, in addition to one-year rolling proportions for England, Cancer Alliances and Clinical Commissioning Groups.  The data are also provided by cancer site for England.

This publication provides quarterly indications prior to the publication of annual estimates in the Routes to Diagnosis publication.

The publication and data file can be found on the Emergency Presentations of Cancer: Quarterly Data collection page. 

The interactive tool can be found on the emergency presentations data page (this link opens in a new window)

Notes:

1. Official statistics are statistics produced by crown bodies, those acting on behalf of crown bodies, or those bodies specified in statutory orders, as defined in section 6 of the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007. The responsible Minister, acting on the advice of their statistical Head of Profession, and in accordance with the guidance issued by the National Statistician on identifying official statistics, determines whether or not statistics should be treated as official statistics.  National Statistics and experimental statistics are types of official statistics. Find out more about Official Statistics