We have detected that you are using Internet Explorer to visit this website. Internet Explorer is now being phased out by Microsoft. As a result, NHS Digital no longer supports any version of Internet Explorer for our web-based products, as it involves considerable extra effort and expense, which cannot be justified from public funds. Some features on this site will not work. You should use a modern browser such as Edge, Chrome, Firefox, or Safari. If you have difficulty installing or accessing a different browser, contact your IT support team.
Hospital Outpatient Activity - 2010-11
National statistics- Publication Date:
- 20 Dec 2011
- Geographic Coverage:
- England
- Geographical Granularity:
- Strategic Health Authorities, Hospital Trusts, Independent Sector Health Care Providers, Regions, NHS Trusts, Country
- Date Range:
- 01 Apr 2010 to 31 Mar 2011
Summary
For the 2010-11 financial year, Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) has collected almost 88 million records detailing outpatient appointments by NHS hospitals in England or performed in the independent sector, and commissioned by the English NHS.
Outpatient HES data was collected for the first time in 2003-04. The Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) first released outpatient data at the end of July 2006 and the data was originally released on an 'experimental' basis. Since then, the experimental label has been removed and in 2008 the outpatient published tables were accredited as a National Statistic. This means the data within these specific tables has been produced in accordance with the 'Code of Practice for Official Statistics'.
To fully realise the advantages, the quality and coverage of the HES outpatient data needs to be improved with the support of providers throughout England. Provider level information is available in the supporting Excel document, 'NHS Outpatient Statistics: Provider Level Analysis, 2009-10 to 2010-11'. This presents information at national, strategic health authority, hospital provider (where submitted) relating to:
- Type of attendance and sex
- Type of attendance
- Attendances by age
- Non attendances by age
- First attendances by source of referral
- First attendance by outcome
- First attendances from patients referred by General Medical and Dental Practitioners by time waited
- Selected main specialties.
Highlights
- In 2010-11 there were 88.0 million outpatients appointments, of which 70.3 million (79.8 per cent) were attended.
- Patient and hospital cancellations were similar, 6.1 per cent and 5.9 per cent respectively of all appointments.
- 6.9 million appointments (7.8 per cent) were not attended.
- While the total number of appointments has increased year on year, the proportion of attendances has remained relatively constant since 2007-08.
- The greatest number of outpatient appointments was for patients in their 60's, accounting for 11.0 million or 15.7 per cent of all attendances.