Unscheduled care analyses (2013)

The Public Health Wales Observatory has published a series of analyses for health boards which have emergency departments (EDs) within their boundaries. The analyses include information from the Emergency Department Data Set (EDDS).

One of the specified uses of the EDDS is for public health and health improvement purposes. This is its first use by the Observatory as submission of data to the EDDS only began on 1 April 2009. The coverage and quality of the data have not been formally assessed by the Observatory and no data cleaning has been undertaken. As such, local knowledge may aid interpretation and would be best placed to identify any potential data quality issues, such as differences in coding procedures. Some aspects of data completeness have been commented on alongside some of the analyses. There are opportunities for services to examine and improve data recorded for the future.

EDDS relates only to Welsh EDs as there are no readily available data for Welsh residents attending English EDs to enable resident based analyses. Whilst this affects only certain areas to the east of Wales, to keep a consistent approach for all health boards, these analyses are based on attendances at the EDs irrespective of place of residence, unless otherwise indicated.

The analyses comprise two categories of output:

1. Hospital activity analyses for admissions to hospitals within the health board

2. A range of EDDS analyses for attendances to EDs within the health board