NYU Data Catalog

National Health Service Hospital Episode Statistics

Alternate Titles(s): NHS HES
UID: 10690
Description
The National Health Service Hospital Episode Statistics (NHS HES) include over 1 billion medical records of patients who attended outpatient appointments, were seen at accident and emergency (A&E) departments, or were admitted to NHS hospitals in England. This data is collected and curated on a monthly basis and has been used for purposes such as research and service evaluation. HES consists of the following datasets:
  • Hospital Episode Statistics Admitted Patient Care (HES APC): January 1989 to present day
  • Hospital Episode Statistics Critical Care (HES Critical Care): January 2007 to present day
  • Hospital Episode Statistics Outpatients (HES OP): January 2003 to present day
  • Hospital Episode Statistics Accident and Emergency (HES A&E): January 2007 to April 2020

HES includes clinical (e.g., diagnoses, operations), demographic (e.g., age group, gender, and ethnicity), administrative (e.g., dates of admission and discharge), and geographic information. Information about mental health specific hospital activities are included in a separate data product, the Mental Health Services Data Set (MHSDS). Since October 2017, national data on urgent and emergency care has been compiled in the Emergency Care Data Set (ECDS), which replaced HES A&E.

Publisher
National Health Service (NHS) England
Timeframe
1989 - Present
Geographic Coverage
England
Local Expert
Simon A. Jones
Subject of Study
Homo sapiens
Subject Domain
Electronic Health Records
Health Care System
Quality of Health Care
Population Age
Child (2 years - 12 years)
Adolescent (13 years - 18 years)
Adult (19 years - 64 years)
Senior (65 years - 79 years)
Aged (80 years and over)
Newborn (under 1 month)
Infant (1 month - 23 months)
Keywords
Delivery of Health Care
Demographics
Diagnosis
Electronic Health Records
Emergency Departments
Health Care/Utilization
Health Facilities
Health Services
Health Services Accessibility
Hospitalization
Hospitals
Inpatients
Mortality
Outcome Assessment (Health Care)
Outpatients
Patient Admission
Patient Discharge
Patients
Population Characteristics
Public Health
Quality of Health Care
Treatment Outcome

Access

Restrictions
Free to All
Application Required
Instructions

On a monthly and annual basis, NHS England releases provisional reports and data tables that provide a snapshot of national trends.

Interested users within the United Kingdom may also request record-level data through the Data Access Request Service (DARS). Current pre-application eligiblilty criteria can be found here. Users who satisfy the pre-application criteria must register for an account in the DARS Online system to submit an electronic application.

Access via NHS HES

Publicly-available data (monthly and annual statistics)

Access via NHS HES

Instructions and links for requesting record-level data

Associated Publications
Jones S, Moulton C, Swift S, Molyneux P, Black S, Mason N, Oakley R, Mann C. Association between delays to patient admission from the emergency department and all-cause 30-day mortality. Emerg Med J. 2022 Mar;39(3):168-173.
Data Type
Administrative
Electronic Health Record
Dataset Format(s)
Microsoft Excel, CSV
PubMed Search
View articles which use this dataset
Other Resources
HES Analytical Technical Output Specification

Data dictionary

HES Analysis Guide

User guide for HES

HES Metadata Dashboard

Link and instructions for reviewing HES metadata

NHS Artificial Data Pilot

Synthetic HES dataset