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Processing cycle and Emergency Care Data Set (ECDS) data quality

Emergency Care Data Set (ECDS) data comes from the routine submissions of data from providers to NHS England for the purposes of payment for and commissioning of healthcare in England. This page publishes quality reports on ECDS to provide timely insight into the completeness and validity for ECDS, and early analyses of data prior to April 2020.

Page contents

The Emergency Care Data Set (ECDS) is the national data set for urgent and emergency care. It replaced Accident and Emergency Commissioning Data Set (CDS type 010) in April 2020 and was implemented through ECDS (CDS Type 011).

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.

ECDS processing cycle

Healthcare providers collect administrative and clinical data locally to support the care of the patient. The data is submitted to the Secondary Uses Service (SUS).

For submitted ECDS data, SUS consolidates those submissions and compiles the data daily for analytical use. On specified pre-arranged dates during the year this is also validated and cleansed with additional data items derived to create a monthly and annual ECDS data product. In addition, data quality reports and checks are completed at various stages in the cleansing and processing cycle.

ECDS data quality

This interactive data quality report shows the overall quality of ECDS data submitted to the Secondary Uses Service (SUS). It provides insight into the completeness and validity of a large volume of the ECDS data items, allowing them to be viewed by site, provider, Integrated Care Board (ICB), NHS England region and national levels of breakdown. This report is classified as management information, it is not an official statistic.

Accessibility of this tool

This tool is in Microsoft Power BI which does not fully support all accessibility needs.  If you need further assistance, please contact us for help.

ECDS DQ rules and filters

Dashboard guidance

ECDS data quality reports prior to April 2020

These data quality open data Excel tabulations provide early analyses of the data submitted in the ECDS for the financial years 2017/18, 2018/19 and 2019/20, prior to ECDS replacing our HES A&E data product, to become the official record level data product for Emergency Care. Their purpose is to support users make their own assessment of the suitability of using the data product for this time period for their own specific analytical and reporting needs.

They report on activity counts being submitted by providers. They also include breakdowns of four SNOMED CT values: chief complaint, clinical Investigation, first diagnosis code and treatment code by provider.

ECDS Excel tabulation – April 2019 to March 2020

xlsx 17 MB

ECDS Excel tabulation – April 2018 to March 2019

xlsx 15 MB

Further A&E and ECDS data quality reports

The monthly Accident and Emergency (A&E) official statistics reporting series A&E quality indicators continues to be published.

The Secondary Uses Service (SUS) data quality dashboard reports on the quality of the key data items that have formed part of the ECDS CQUIN (first diagnosis code, acuity, chief complaint and injury intent).

Further information

internal Emergency Care Data Set (ECDS)

The Emergency Care Data Set (ECDS) is the national data set for urgent and emergency care. It replaced Accident & Emergency Commissioning Data Set (CDS type 010) and was implemented through: ECDS (CDS 6.2.2 Type 011)

internal Emergency Care Data Set (ECDS) data product

The ECDS data product is created from data submitted to NHS England as part of the Commissioning Data Set (CDS) (CDS type 011) which is managed by the Secondary Uses Service (SUS). Detail on the data submitted and how it is processed by SUS may be found within the Enhanced TOS (ETOS). 

Last edited: 23 November 2023 5:05 pm