Update (02 November 2015) Data Quality Note. An error was identified and corrected in tables 'Organisations with data extracted on 20 June 2014' and 'Organisations with shortfalls / missing data' of the annual Data Quality Note, where providers who had corrected their shortfalls since the provisional HES publication had not been updated. This was not an error in the data, only in the data quality note.
Update: (26 March 2015) Provider Level Analysis released.
Update: (26 February 2015) the summary report containing headline figures has been replaced by detailed analysis and additional Excel files have been released.
For the 2013-14 financial year, Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) has collected over 100 million records detailing outpatient appointments by NHS hospitals in England or performed in the independent sector, and commissioned by the English NHS.
HES outpatient data was collected for the first time in 2003-04. The Health and Social Care Information Centre 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.
This publication is released in three phases:
January 2015 - Headline figures published; February 2015 - Detailed analysis published; March 2015 - Provider level analysis published