Non-elective inpatient spells at English hospitals April 2020 to November 2025

Several improvements have been made to the publication this month. A correction has also been applied to the Ambulatory Care Sensitive Conditions (ACSC) file. Users should take note of these changes when interpreting the data, particularly if drawing comparisons to prior publications in the series. Please direct any queries to [email protected].

1. ACSC breakdowns corrected to adults only – we recently became aware that prior versions of the Ambulatory Care Sensitive Conditions (ACSC) file included patients of all ages in the ‘Activity: 18+’ column, rather than patients aged 18 or over. This has now been corrected. At England level and for all time periods, this has resulted in a 5% reduction in activity, although this will vary from provider to provider and will disproportionately impact providers of children’s hospitals.
2. Duplicate provider codes – for the first time, activity for providers which have undergone mergers or demergers, but retained an existing ODS code, has been grouped for all months under the current ODS code and name. Caution should therefore be exercised when analysing provider level activity over time.
3. Sheffield and Barnsley local authority changes – on 1 April 2025, as a result of the Barnsley and Sheffield (Boundary Change) Order 2024, new codes were introduced for the reconfigured Sheffield and Barnsley local authorities:
   • E08000039 for Sheffield (replacing the legacy code E08000019)
   • E08000038 for Barnsley (replacing the legacy code E08000016)

Until such a time as ONS mid-year population estimates are available for these new authorities, activity will be re-coded to the respective legacy codes. This will result in a slight misalignment between the footprints used for the numerator (activity) and denominator (population), although the impact of this will be minor given the changes affect a small proportion of the population of each authority.