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Accident and Emergency Departments: Admissions

Volume 495: debated on Tuesday 7 July 2009

To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many patients who presented at accident and emergency departments were not subsequently admitted to hospital in each year since 1997. (284292)

The Department does not collect information in the format requested.

However, the Department does collect data on the number of accident and emergency (A&E) attendances and the number of admissions to hospital wards via an A&E unit. Data on both of these are presented in the following table, for years in which figures are available.1

1 The criteria for calculating attendance and admissions numbers have varied slightly over the period covered by the table.

First attendances

Admissions via A&E

Those attending A&E not subsequently admitted

1997-98

12,793,720

1,847,521

10,946,199

1998-99

12,811,064

1,955,969

10,855,095

1999-2000

13,167,495

2,035,119

11,132,376

2000-01

12,953,432

2,105,021

10,848,411

2001-02

12,900,727

2,224,833

10,675,894

2002-03

13,253,405

2,288,053

10,965,352

2003-04

15,312,738

2,467,748

12,844,990

2004-05

16,711,750

2,813,368

13,898,382

2005-06

17,775,225

2,951,076

14,824,149

2006-07

18,010,506

3,037,131

14,973,375

2007-08

18,302,138

3,087,020

15,215,118

2008-09

18,820,828

3,266,603

15,554,225

Note:

To note also that data on the number of attendances at A&E type 1 departments are available and published quarterly via the Department of Health's Quarterly Monitoring A&E Services dataset. This includes patients who attended A&E but who were not subsequently treated and counts each attendance by the same patient separately.