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National Statistics
Publication, Part of

Hospital Outpatient Activity - 2007-08

National statistics
Publication Date:
Geographic Coverage:
England
Geographical Granularity:
Strategic Health Authorities, Hospital Trusts, Independent Sector Health Care Providers, Regions, NHS Trusts, Country
Date Range:
01 Apr 2007 to 31 Mar 2008

Summary

For the 2007-08 financial year, Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) has collected more than 60 million records detailing outpatient appointments delivered by NHS hospitals in England or performed in the independent sector and commissioned by the English NHS.  

The outpatients' data set contains individual records for all outpatient appointments occurring in England including details such as the type of attendance ie whether it was a first or follow up attendance or the main specialty ie the specialty under which the consultant with prime responsibility for the patient is registered.

Highlights

•In 2007-08, there were around 16.5 million first outpatient attendances. Of these 8.9 million resulted from GP referral, 1.1 million from referral from accident & emergency, 3 million from other consultants, and the remainder from other sources
• For 74 per cent of first attendances, the patient was referred to this appointment for advice/consultation, with only 5 per cent referred for a specific procedure. The reason for the referral of the remaining first attendances was unknown or unstated
• Of the 16.5 million first outpatient attendances, around 4.9 million resulted in the patient being discharged from the consultant's care, 11.1 million were referred for another appointment, with the outcome unknown for the remaining 0.5 million attendances
• There were 37.8 million subsequent outpatient attendances with 6.2 million of these occurring in the 65 to 74 age group
• Trauma and orthopaedics had the highest proportion of first attendances which accounted for 12.9 per cent in 2007-08
• Overall, there was a ratio of 2.3 outpatient follow up attendances to every first attendance. These ratios varied by age, with a maximum of 2.9 follow up outpatient attendances for every first attendance for the 75 to 84 age group.

Resources

Last edited: 27 January 2022 3:22 pm