This is a publication on Accident and Emergency (A&E) activity in English NHS hospitals and English NHS-commissioned activity in the independent sector. This annual publication covers the financial year ending March 2019. It contains final data and replaces the provisional data that are published each month. This is a joint publication between NHS Digital and NHS England. This collaboration enables data to be brought together from two different sources enabling inclusion of a wider set of breakdowns and measures and a more complete picture to be presented.

The data sources for this publication are Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) and A&E Attendances and Emergency Admissions Monthly Situation Reports (MSitAE).

This publication releases some high level analyses of both HES and MSitAE data relating to A&E attendances in NHS hospitals, minor injury units and walk-in centres. It includes analysis by patient demographics, time spent in A&E, distributions by time of arrival and day of week, arriving by ambulance, performance times, waits for admission and re-attendances to A&E within 7 days.

The following additional analyses are also included in this report:

• Comparison of 4 hour and 12 hour waits between the four home nations, England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales

• A&E attendances by Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD)

• A&E attendances by ethnicity

Additional exploratory analyses have also been included as part of this release that seek to review reported data quality to inform future uses of the data.