Emergency and Urgent Care System Demand in Yorkshire and Humber

A retrospective analysis of routine data.

Background

Addressing the long-term rise in demand for urgent and emergency care (UEC) services is a key focus for the NHS. The Collaboration and Leadership in Applied Health and Care Yorkshire and Humber (CLAHRC YH) are undertaking a detailed population analysis to identify patients who present to the ED or who are admitted to the hospital in an emergency who may be amenable to alternative management in the EUC system.

This research project involves the processing of Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) data collected from NHS Digital for the period 2011-2014. The project team is bound by the regulations set out in the General Data Protection Regulation (EU 2016/679) and Data Protection Act 2018. More information about how patient information is processed and how we protect the data of patients is contained in the privacy notice accessed in the link below.

Aims

To use routinely collected, pseudo-anonymised Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) to describe a detailed profile of all emergency department attendances and admissions in Yorkshire and Humber over the three-year period, specifically to examine:

Trends in ED attendance and emergency hospital admissions over time
ED attendance and emergency hospital admissions assessed by case mix of the population
Identify explanatory factors affecting emergency hospital services including factors modifiable by services (such as availability of services eg acute wards

Progress

The data was collected in 2015 and a number of analyses have been completed to identify key population groups who could receive alternative care in the UEC system, including non-urgent attenders to the ED. Work is ongoing to identify patients who meet a process-based definition of an avoidable admission.

The project is due to be completed in September 2019.