New A&E indicators for consideration

The Health and Social Care Information Centre have released information on five indicators that provide information on the quality of service delivered in A&E departments across the country.

The report, generated from Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) A&E data, sets out data coverage, data quality and performance information for the following A&E indicators:

- Left department before being seen for treatment rate
- Re-attendance rate
- Time to initial assessment
- Time to treament
- Total time in A&E

Publishing these data will help share information on the quality of care of A&E services to stimulate the discussion and debate between patients, clinicians, providers and commissioners, which is needed in a culture of continuous improvement.

The data used in these reports are sourced from Provisional A&E HES data, and as such these data may differ to information extracted directly from Secondary Uses Service (SUS) data, or data extracted directly from local patient administration systems. Provisional HES data may be revised throughout the year.

Key facts

• A&E HES data contains 1.59 million A&E attendances for October 2014 at all types of A&E.  However, A&E HES data are incomplete; over 1.69 million A&E attendances were reported in the Department of Health Situation Report data collection for the month, and 58 organisations that report data to Situation Reports did not report data to A&E HES; these organisations are mostly lower acuity services such as minor injury units and walk-in centres.
• Several organisations reported data that did not meet the data quality checks required by A&E indicators.  The 95th percentile and longest single wait information are particularly sensitive to poor data quality, outliers and data definitional issues, which contributes to why some unusually high values may be observed for these measures.
• Nationally, 2.6 per cent of attendances at A&E departments were recorded as having left A&E before being seen for treatment, and 7.7 per cent of attendances in A&E in October 2014 were unplanned re-attendances within 7 days of a previous attendance.
• The median average time to initial assessment for attendances brought to A&E by ambulance was 5 minutes, with 95 per cent of patients being assessed within 116 minutes.  For all patients receiving treatment, the median average time to treatment was 53 minutes with 95 per cent of patients receiving treatment within 3 hours 6 minutes.
• The median average total time in A&E for all patients was 2 hours 17 minutes, with 95 per cent of patients departing A&E within 5 hours 42 minutes of arrival.

 Source: hscic.gov.uk