Accident and Emergency activity in English hospitals

NHS Digital in collaboration with NHS England has published the statistics on Accident and Emergency (A&E) activity in English hospitals for April 2018 to March 2019. The data were sourced from Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) and A&E Attendances and Emergency Admissions Monthly Situation Reports.

Key findings from the report are as follows:

• A total of 24.8 million attendances in A&E were recorded in 2018-2019, indicating an increase of 4 per cent since 2017-2018 and 21 per cent since 2009-2010.
• From 2009-2010 to 2018-2019, the attendances for patients aged ≥65 years rose by 2 per cent, whereas those for patients aged 15-34 years fell by 2 per cent.
• In 2018-2019, 88 per cent of patient attendances spent ≤4 hours in A&E.
• From 2009-2010 to 2018-2019, reattendances increased from 7 per cent to just below 9 per cent of attendances.
• Ten per cent of the population residing in the most deprived areas had twice as many A&E attendances compared with 10 per cent of least deprived population.
• Within the UK, England had the second-highest rate of Type 1 A&E attendances (28,011 per 100,000 population) after Northern Ireland (35,676 per 100,000 population).