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The Emergency Care Data Set (ECDS) is the national data set for urgent and emergency care.

ECDS allows NHS England to provide information to support the care provided in emergency departments by including the data items needed to understand capacity and demand and help improve patient care. The Emergency Care Data Set (ECDS) collects information about why people attend emergency departments and the treatment they receive to improve patient care through better and more consistent information, allow better planning of healthcare services and improve communication between health professionals.

Please reference use of the Taskforce data dashboards, and if you have any comments or questions please contact taskforce@asthmaandlung.org.uk.

Note buttons at the top right hand side of the data: A&E Activity, Repeat Attendances

How to use this dashboard – A & E Activity

  • The A&E Activity dashboard allows you to view emergency care activity for your selected organisation and diagnosis group, how activity has changed compared with the previous year, and how it compares with other organisations of the same type
  • You can change the year and organisation in the filter bar at the top. Filtering by organisation type will allow you to look at data at an England, ICB and trust level.
  • Data is available for year 2021/22, 2022/23 and 2023/24, however hovering over the arrow under year on year (YOY) will give you the change from the previous year selected
  • The Diagnosis Group filter above the chart will allow you to see and compare data for:
    • All respiratory conditions
    • Influenza
    • Pneumonia
    • COPD
    • Asthma
    • Bronchiectasis
    • Interstitial lung disease
  • While searching for a particular location the graph on the right will present all locations, the value type filter and sort bars can be used to modify the order of the graph and which value is presented. For example if value type e Cost (£) is selected and Sort bars by Activity Value is selected, the bar chart will sort by Cost (£)
  • The red dotted line on graph shows the national average and when filtered for a particular location this area will be shown as pink bar on the graph

Unique filters – A & E activity

  • Time period
  • Value type – attendances, attendances >4 hours, % attendances > 4 hours, % total attendances, patients, cost (£), admissions, % admissions

How to use this dashboard – Repeat Attendances

  • The Repeat Attendances dashboard allows you to explore the number of times patients have attended emergency departments for the selected date period and filter options.
  • You can also compare your selected metric across organisations to see how the number of repeat attendances impacts different organisations
  • Diagnosis Group filter and Value Type filter change both graphs
  • Number of attendances filter changes only the right hand graph
  • If selecting Patients in Value Type filter, note that the graph on the left hand side will have 2 columns showing patients – only look at the graph on the right hand side
  • If selecting Attendances per Patient in Value Type filter, this is only helpful if you also select Five or More in the Number of Attendances filter
  • Note that the Value Type is always in relation to the Number of Attendances e.g. if Cost per Patient (£) is selected in Value Type and One is selected in Number of Attendances, the right hand graph will show you the cost per patient of patients who have only attended A&E once

Unique filters – Repeat Attendances

  • Time period
  • Number of attendances

Key Definitions

  • Admissions – number of A&E attendances where the discharge destination has been recorded as an admission. 
  • The A&E Activity dashboard allows you to view emergency care activity for your selected organisation and diagnosis group, how activity has changed compared with the previous year, and how it compares with other organisations of the same type% admissions – the percentage of total A&E attendances where the discharge destination has been recorded as an admission. 
  • Attendances – number of A&E attendances. 
  • Attendances > 4 hours – number of A&E attendances where the reported departure time since arrival was more than 4 hours. 
  • % attendances > 4 hours – the percentage of A&E attendances over 4 hours of all A&E attendances. 
  • Attendances per patient – calculated by dividing the number of A&E attendances by the number of distinct patients. 
  • % total attendances – percentage of A&E attendances (for selected respiratory condition) of all A&E attendances. 
  • Patients – number of unique patients. A patient may attend A&E multiple times due to the same diagnosis/comorbidity. 
  • Cost – cost of attendance, as recorded in the Emergency Care Data Set. 

About the data source

The Emergency Care Data Set (ECDS) is the national data set for urgent and emergency care. ECDS allows NHS England to provide information to support the care provided in emergency departments by including the data items needed to understand capacity and demand and help improve patient care. The Emergency Care Data Set (ECDS) collects information about why people attend emergency departments and the treatment they receive to improve patient care through better and more consistent information, allow better planning of healthcare services and improve communication between health professionals. The ECDS uses SNOMED codes for identifying diagnosis/comorbidity.

Read the data disclaimer.