Publication, Part of Hospital Admitted Patient Care Activity
Hospital Admitted Patient Care Activity, 2025-26
National statistics, Accredited official statistics
Summary
This publication reports on Admitted Patient Care and Adult Critical Care hospital activity in England for the financial year 2025-26.
It includes but is not limited to analysis of hospital episodes by patient demographics, diagnoses, external causes/injuries, operations, bed days, admission method, time waited, specialty, provider level analysis and Adult Critical Care (ACC).
Its purpose is to inform and support strategic and policy-led processes for the benefit of patient care. It may also be of interest to researchers, journalists and members of the public.
The data source for this publication is Hospital Episode Statistics (HES). It contains final data and replaces the provisional data that are released each month. HES contains records of all admissions, appointments and attendances at NHS-commissioned hospital services in England. The HES data used in this publication are called 'Finished Consultant Episodes', and each episode relates to a period of care for a patient under a single consultant at a single hospital. Therefore, this report counts the number of episodes of care for admitted patients rather than the number of patients. This publication shows the number of episodes during the period, with breakdowns including by patient's age, gender, diagnosis, procedure involved and by provider.
Please send queries or feedback via email to [email protected]. Author: Secondary Care Open Data and Publications, NHS England. Lead Analyst: Karl Eichler
Key Facts
Number of Finished Consultant Episodes (FCEs)
In 2025-26 there were 22.6 million FCEs recorded.
Number of Finished Admission Episodes (FAEs)
In 2025-26 there were 18.5 million FAEs recorded.
Adult Critical Care
There were 234,806 useable critical care records recorded in 2025-26.
Resources
Last edited: 24 September 2026 9:28 am