Accident and Emergency provisional quality indicators
A new report sets out data coverage, data quality and performance information.
Report information for the following five Accident & Emergency (A&E) indicators:
- Left department before being seen for treatment rate
- Re-attendance rate
- Time to initial assessment
- Time to treatment
- Total time in A&E
Publishing these data will help share information on the quality of care of A&E services, to stimulate the discussion and debate between patients, clinicians, providers and commissioners, which is needed in a culture of continuous improvement.
In April 2011 a new set of clinical quality indicators was introduced to replace the previous four hour waiting time standard, and measure the quality of care delivered in A&E departments in England. Further details on the background and management of the quality indicators are available here.
This is the first publication of data on the A&E clinical quality indicators, drawn from A&E data within provisional Hospital Episode Statistics (HES). These data relate to A&E attendances in April 2011 and draw on just under 1.4 million detailed records of attendances at major A&E departments, single speciality A&E departments (e.g. dental A&Es), minor injury units and walk-in centres in England.
These A&E HES data are published as experimental statistics to note the shortfalls in the quality and coverage of records submitted via the A&E commissioning data set. The data used in these reports are sourced from Provisional A&E HES data, and as such these data may differ to information extracted directly from Secondary Uses Service (SUS) data, or data extracted directly from local patient administration systems.
Provisional HES data may be revised throughout the year (for example, activity data for April 2011 may differ depending on whether they are extracted in August 2011, or later in the year). Indicator data published for earlier months have not been revised using updated HES data extracted in subsequent months.
The data presented here represent the output of the existing A&E Commissioning Dataset (CDS V6 Type 010). It must be recognised that these data will not exactly match the data definitions for the A&E clinical quality indicators set out in this guidance.
The Department is currently working with ISB to amend the existing CDS Type 10 Accident and Emergency to collect the data required to monitor the A&E indicators.
A&E HES data are collected and published by the NHS Information Centre for Health and Social Care, the data in this report are secondary analyses of HES data produced by the Urgent & Emergency Care team, Department of Health.
More information