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Publication, Part of

Statistics on Patient Journeys: Hospital outpatient activity in 2003-04 and 2004-05, First report and quality assessment of experimental data from patient-level record systems

Official statistics
Publication Date:
Geographic Coverage:
England
Date Range:
01 Apr 2003 to 31 Mar 2005

Summary

Access the press release

See the HESonline publication tables and draft data quality report on the HESonline website

This is the first report on outpatient data from the Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) team within the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC). The HSCIC (HES) Outpatients Dataset, which comprises individual records for all outpatient attendances occurring in England, is a rich source of detailed records. These records can be analysed to produce a much wider variety of statistics about patterns of service use than have previously been available from aggregate returns.

This report focuses on 2004-05 data as comparisons with 2003-04 would be more quality than activity related and could be misleading. However, 2003-04 data will be made available for further analysis. Despite variation in the detail due to issues of coverage and quality we are confident that the broad conclusions in the report are justified. There are known weaknesses in the data, but rather than withhold this already useful dataset we are releasing it labelled 'experimental' and are seeking input from users to help us bring about rapid improvements and developments needed to support key NHS business and policy areas.

Highlights

• The data show around 13.1 million first outpatient attendances. Of these, 8.0 million resulted from GP referral, 1.0 million from referral from Accident and Emergency, 2.1 million from other consultants and the remainder from other sources
• Of the 13.1 million first outpatient attendances, around 3.9 million resulted in the patient being known to be discharged, 8.6 million referred for another appointment with the remainder resulting in another outcome
• For 77 per cent of first attendances the patient had been referred for advice/consultation, with only 5 per cent referred for a specific procedure. The reason for the remainder is unknown or unstated
• Overall, there was a ratio of 2.4 outpatient follow-up attendances seen to every first attendance. This ratio varied by age with a maximum of 3.2 outpatient follow-up attendances seen for every first attendance for the 75-84 age group
• Most patients were being referred by GPs but the proportion varied widely by specialty
• Men were more likely to miss their appointment without giving notice than women
• The value of the dataset is limited by the fact that some fields are not mandated. This issue needs to be rapidly resolved
• Many important data items, particularly those enabling record linking, are well completed by most provider organisations

Resources

Last edited: 11 April 2018 5:23 pm