NHS England: HES, Accident and Emergency attendences in England (Experimental Statistics) 2007-08

This is the first publication of the accident and emergency (A&E) attendance data within Hospital Episodes Statistics (HES). It covers the period April 2007 to March 2008 and draws on over 12.3 million detailed records of attendances at major A&E departments, single specialty A&E departments, minor injuries units and walk-in centres in England. Publishing the A&E HES data for the first time, as experimental statistics, enables initial conclusions to be presented for discussion and aims to promote and highlight the uses of this potentially rich data set. During the period covered by this publication, not all NHS trusts have completed data submissions and data quality is poor in some cases. The publication also includes analysis of the A&E HES data compared to the Quarterly Monitoring of Accident and Emergency (QMAE) return, the official source of A&E information, to highlight areas for further investigation.