NHS may have to recalculate A&E performance figures

The UK Statistics Authority has told NHS England to explain changes to the recording of A&E data, which may leave people reaching ‘misleading conclusions’.

The letter sent by the authority focuses on advice given to trusts by the health regulator NHS Improvement, which includes the suggestion that including walk-in centres or urgent treatment centres in performance data would help improve overall performance.

Additionally, another email sent later in October by NHS Improvement was seen by trusts as a request to add in data from walk-in centres not run by them and not on hospital grounds. This directly conflicts with NHS England guidance which says walk-in centre data can only be included if the trust has clinical responsibility for the service or if it co-located on the trust's grounds.

BBC analysis reveals that as least six trusts in England reported improvement in their all A&E types four-hour performance figures in October compared with September, in some cases by five per cent, by adding in walk-in centres not on their site and not run by the trusts.

Dr Taj Hassan, President of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said: “Having accurate, consistent data to describe both wider system performance as well as the performance of Type I Emergency Departments especially is essential. If it is true that there is variation in how data is being collected, then this is of significant concern. We know that the published data shows an increasing number of our emergency departments are markedly crowded and staff have described conditions as being intolerable at times.

“The data standards are crucial for measuring how our systems are coping and are a powerful marker of patient safety. They help also as an aspect of measuring quality of care. It is also vital that data is presented appropriately. All attendance data should be separated to make clear which pathways patients have taken to treatment. Aggregating these data results in an inaccurate picture of how systems are performing, and will not help to reflect the actual pressures they are under.”