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Hospital Episode Statistics

  • Last modified date:
    9 February 2007

HES data for the years 1999/2000 to 2002/3 and at the Local Authority geographical level  has been released on  the Neighbourhood Statistics website, as part of the Health and Care Domain. The information relates to Finished Consultant Episodes on diagnoses of Coronary Heart Disease, Stroke and Cancer, causes of accidents and details of hip replacement, cataract, coronary artery bypass (CABG) or a percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PCTA) operations.

Guidance on Use and Interpretation

Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) provides information about the admitted patient treatment delivered by NHS hospitals in England.  This includes day case surgery, but currently excludes out-patients.  NHS Trusts submit their data to the NHS-wide Clearing Service for onward transmission to commissioners and HES is built from a national, annual extract of these records.  The data are then cleaned, validated and new fields derived.

The usual unit of measurement is the Finished Consultant Episode (FCE).  This is a continuous period of in-patient care administered by a particular consultant within a single hospital provider (normally a NHS Trust).  If responsibility for an admitted patient is passed to another consultant, or if the patient is transferred to another NHS Trust, a new FCE will commence.  Also, it is not uncommon for a given person to be admitted to hospital more than once during a year.  For these reasons, the number of FCEs shown in the dataset exceeds the number of individual persons treated within the year.

Background

Hospital Episodes Statistics (HES) is a record-level data warehouse of episodes of admitted patient care to NHS hospitals in England.  It includes information on the patient, when and where they were treated, diagnoses and operations, type of admission and various supplementary and derived data.  The information has many uses and supports a wide variety of work within the Department of Health, other government departments, the NHS, Public Health Observatories, medical research and the general public.

Finished Consultant Episodes (FCE) counts from HES have been produced for 2002-2003 LA -level HES data for the following specified diagnosis, cause and operative procedures:

  1. Diagnosis - Coronary Heart Disease
  2. Diagnosis - Stroke
  3. Diagnosis - Cancer
  4. Causes - Accident
  5. Operation - Hip replacement
  6. Operation - CABG and PTCA (Heart)
  7. Operation - Cataracts

Cancer, coronary heart disease (CHD) and stroke are major causes of death (accounting for around two-thirds of all deaths) and ill-health. There is a strong social gradient in these diseases, with incidence and mortality higher among more deprived groups. The Public Health White Paper 'Choosing Health - Making Healthier Choices Easier' sets out the importance of giving a priority to tackling health inequalities. The Department of Health has set Public Service Agreement targets to reduce mortality rates from cancer and from cardiovascular disease (covering both CHD and stroke), with a requirement that faster progress should be made in deprived areas with poor health.

Contacts

If you would like further information on Neighbourhood Statistics, please contact the team on 020 7972 6570 or email:

Time series information on Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) by NHS organisational boundaries is already in the public domain and published on:

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