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Publication, Part of

Autism Statistics, April 2021 to March 2022

Experimental statistics,

Publication Date:
9 Jun 2022
Date Range:
01 Apr 2019 to 31 Mar 2022

Current Chapter

Autism Statistics, April 2021 to March 2022

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Methodology

We have noticed an error in the way the following measures were produced after MHSDS version 5 resulting in an overcount of these figures. This issue has been fixed and the corrected data can be found within the data files on the publication pages below:

 

MEASURE_ID

MEASURE_NAME

ASD18

Number of patients with an open "suspected autism" referral in the month, that has been open for at least 13 weeks, receiving a first appointment in 13 weeks or less

ASD18a

Number of patients with an open "suspected autism" referral in the month, that has been open for at least 13 weeks, receiving a first appointment after more than 13 weeks

ASD18b

Number of patients with an open "suspected autism" referral in the month, that has been open for at least 13 weeks, that have not had a care contact appointment recorded

ASD18c

Number of patients aged 0 to 17 with an open "suspected autism" referral in the month, that has been open for at least 13 weeks, receiving a first appointment in 13 weeks or less

ASD18d

Number of patients aged 18 and over with an open "suspected autism" referral in the month, that has been open for at least 13 weeks, receiving a first appointment in 13 weeks or less

ASD18e

Number of patients aged 0 to 17 with an open "suspected autism" referral in the month, that has been open for at least 13 weeks, receiving a first appointment after more than 13 weeks

ASD18f

Number of patients aged 0 to 17 with an open "suspected autism" referral in the month, that has been open for at least 13 weeks, that have not had a care contact appointment recorded

ASD18g

Number of patients aged 18 and over with an open "suspected autism" referral in the month, that has been open for at least 13 weeks, receiving a first appointment after more than 13 weeks

ASD18h

Number of patients aged 18 and over with an open "suspected autism" referral in the month, that has been open for at least 13 weeks, that have not had a care contact appointment recorded

ASD19

Proportion of patients with an open "suspected autism" referral in the month, that has been open for at least 13 weeks, receiving a first appointment in 13 weeks or less

ASD19a

Proportion of patients with an open "suspected autism" referral in the month, that has been open for at least 13 weeks, receiving a first appointment after more than 13 weeks

ASD19b

Proportion of patients with an open "suspected autism" referral in the month, that has been open for at least 13 weeks, that have not had a care contact appointment recorded

ASD19c

Proportion of patients aged 0 to 17 with an open "suspected autism" referral in the month, that has been open for at least 13 weeks, receiving a first appointment in 13 weeks or less

ASD19d

Proportion of patients aged 18 and over with an open "suspected autism" referral in the month, that has been open for at least 13 weeks, receiving a first appointment in 13 weeks or less

ASD19e

Proportion of patients aged 0 to 17 with an open "suspected autism" referral in the month, that has been open for at least 13 weeks, receiving a first appointment after more than 13 weeks

ASD19f

Proportion of patients aged 0 to 17 with an open "suspected autism" referral in the month, that has been open for at least 13 weeks, that have not had a care contact appointment recorded

ASD19g

Proportion of patients aged 18 and over with an open "suspected autism" referral in the month, that has been open for at least 13 weeks, receiving a first appointment after more than 13 weeks

ASD19h

Proportion of patients aged 18 and over with an open "suspected autism" referral in the month, that has been open for at least 13 weeks, that have not had a care contact appointment recorded

 

Autism Statistics, April 2021 to March 2022 - NDRS (digital.nhs.uk)

Autism Statistics, April 2022 to March 2023 - NDRS (digital.nhs.uk)

20 July 2023 13:12 PM

Page contents

Summary

These statistics present a group of measures on waiting times for autism spectrum disorder diagnostic pathways, based on the time between a referral for suspected autism and the first care contact associated with that referral.

There are also multiple breakdowns based on the progression and outcomes of those referrals.

Each of these measures contributes to an overall picture of waiting times for diagnostic pathways. The approach is outlined in the methodology section of this publication.

Issue with Autism Waiting Time Statistics

The data files for this publication have been revised to include a correction to an issue which meant that counts had previously been restricted to only count the latest instance a person appearing in the reporting period. This meant that where a person had a referral with multiple organisations in the reporting period only the latest instance would have been counted. This fix has seen an increase in figures at national level of approximately 3%-5%. As the outputs we publish look back at the last 12 months, please refer to the latest publication as these figures will supersede the previous publications.
NHS Digital apologises for any inconvenience.

There has been a revision to the methodology of measure ASD17 following a review of how this is constructed. This measure previously counted referrals that are open within the month regardless of whether they have also flowed in that month. Previously, this meant that some referrals which have not flowed for a long time were contributing to the metric. This measure has now been revised to count open referrals that had been flowed within the month only.

As of March 2022, this publication is based on a new set of Autism Measures. These new measures have been designed following a review of the statistics with NHS England and NHS Improvement. The previous forward model methodology reported all activity back to the date of the referral and did not present current waiting list information. The new measures have been designed to report the current number patients with an open referral as well as the numbers of new, open and closed referrals at different points in time. Specific data quality measures have also been produced to help providers identify where there might be issues with their data.

The intention is to review and develop these metrics for future publications.

These are experimental statistics and are published to involve users and stakeholders in their development to build in quality and reliability at an early stage.

Two metrics have been added and one metric has been amended in the June 2022 publication.  These changes have been implemented to allow for a new waiting time measure to be included:

  • ASD16a - Number of patients with an open 'suspected autism' referral in the month that has been open for at least 13 weeks is a new metric.  This is a sub-set of ASD16 (Number of patients with an open ‘suspected autism’ referral in the month) where only patients with a referral that has been open for at least 13 weeks are included.
  • ASD18 - Number of patients with an open 'suspected autism' referral in the month, that has been open for at least 13 weeks, receiving a first appointment within 13 weeks has been amended. This has been changed so that only patients where their referral has been open for at least 13 weeks, who have also received a first appointment within 13 weeks are included. 
  • ASD19 - Proportion of patients with an open 'suspected autism' referral in the month, that has been open for at least 13 weeks, receiving a first appointment within 13 weeks is a new metric.  This is the new waiting time measure which is calculated from ASD16a and ASD18 (ASD18 divided by ASD16a).

Two data quality metrics have been removed to provide a shorter list of metrics that focus on the main issues with the quality of the data:

  • ASD15 - Number of open 'suspected autism' referrals that do not appear in every month from first submission has been removed.  This metric was included to demonstrate that the data submitted to MHSDS has gaps in submission (not every referral that is open is submitted in every month). However, the data quality metric ASD14 - Number of open, 'suspected autism' referrals in the month that do not appear in any subsequent month whether discharged or not highlights the larger issue that referrals for suspected autism that stop being submitted are not recorded as closed in MHSDS.
  • ASD22 - Number of ‘suspected autism’ referrals receiving an autism diagnosis in the month has been removed. Comparing this metric to ASD21 - Number of patients with a 'suspected autism' referral receiving an autism diagnosis in the month demonstrated that there was not a substantial number of patients with multiple referrals with an autism diagnosis recorded.

We are aware that autism diagnosis activity also happens in the Community Services Dataset (CSDS) but currently the figures that are presented as part of this publication only include data from the Mental Health Services Dataset (MHSDS). 

Between April 2021 and March 2022, the number of patients with an open referral for suspect autism has increased from just over 74,000 to just over 103,000. The number receiving a first appointment within 13 weeks has also increased in that time from 5,797 to 7,837.

New and closed referrals for suspected autism

There were 7,749 new referrals to specialist mental health services for suspected autism and 5,496 referrals were closed in March 2022.

Patients with open Referrals

In March 2022 there were 103,215 patients with an open referral for suspected Autism. This is an increase of 39% compared with April 2021. Of the patients with an open referral, 84,625  had referrals which had been open for at least 13 weeks

Waiting time from referral to first care contact

Between April 2021 and March 2022, the number of patients with a referral for suspected autism receiving their first care contact within 13 weeks has been steadily rising from 5,797 to 7,837. This is an increase of 35%.

Latest 6 months

The latest 6 months of data for the headline measures is shown below. 

    Oct 2021 Nov 2021 Dec 2021 Jan 2022 Feb 2022 Mar 2022
ASD12 Number of new "suspected autism" referrals in the month 5,952 7,106 7,086 7,317 8,252 7,749
ASD13 Number of closed "suspected autism" referrals in the month 4,255 4,549 4,668 4,462 4,663 5,496
ASD16 Number of patients with an open "suspected autism" referral in the month 88,153 90,964 93,344 96,201 100,024 103,215
ASD16a Number of patients with an open "suspected autism" referral in the month that has been open for at least 13 weeks 75,341 76,355 78,037 79,660 81,832 84,625
ASD18 Number of patients with an open "suspected autism" referral in the month, that has been open for at least 13 weeks, receiving a first appointment in 13 weeks or less 6,787 6,941 7,171 7,400 7,542 7,837
ASD19 Proportion of patients with an open "suspected autism" referral in the month, that has been open for at least 13 weeks, receiving a first appointment in 13 weeks or less 9.01 9.09 9.19 9.29 9.22 9.26
ASD20 Number of patients which have an open "suspected autism" referral in the month receiving at least one care contact in the month 4,660 5,363 4,142 4,856 5,011 5,653
ASD21 Number of patients with an open "suspected autism" referral receiving an autism diagnosis in the month 377 404 391 385 381 459
ASD23 Number of patients with an open "suspected autism" referral receiving a Mental and Behavioural disorder diagnosis in the month that is not an autism diagnosis 128 107 126 91 94 93
ASD24 Number of patients with an open "suspected autism" referral receiving a non-Mental and Behavioural disorder diagnosis recorded in the month 70 36 42 71 90 56

Important Notes:

A referral for suspected autism is defined as a referral where either the primary reason OR other reason for the referral is "Suspected Autism".

Waiting time from referral to care contact dashboard

Open the interactive dashboard

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Last edited: 20 July 2023 1:15 pm