Hospital Episode Statistics (HES): Admitted Patient Care Records for England

Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) is a national data warehouse containing records of all patients admitted to NHS hospitals in England. The dataset is produced annually by NHS Digital and includes details of hospital stays and NHS-commissioned activity in the independent sector. It was last updated on 2026-07-08.

Use Cases

• Analyze hospital admission trends based on annual national data.
• Model healthcare resource allocation based on Healthcare Resource Group (HRG) classifications.
• Compare treatment activity across different regions based on Health Authority and Primary Care Organisation breakdowns.
• Study specialty-specific patient care patterns based on Main Specialty and Treatment Function data.

Strengths

• Covers all patient admissions to NHS hospitals in England, suggesting a complete national census.
• Includes NHS-commissioned activity in the independent sector, providing a broader view of healthcare delivery.
• Data is broken down to multiple administrative levels, including Primary Care Organisation, Health Authority, and Specialty.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale ML tasks.

Provenance

Source

NHS Digital

Collection Method

Administrative records from all NHS hospitals in England and NHS-commissioned independent sector activity.

Time Range

Annual data; specific years are not stated.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-07-08 13:32:13.986258; freshness should be verified.

Geography

England