Hospital Episode Statistics (HES): Admitted Patient Procedures in England

Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) is a national data warehouse containing records of all patients admitted to NHS hospitals in England. The dataset details every hospital stay and NHS-commissioned activity in the independent sector, broken down to the level of procedures, operations, and interventions. It is published by NHS Digital under the OGL-UK-3.0 license and was last updated on 2026-07 08.

Use Cases

• Analyze trends in surgical and medical interventions based on the annual, national procedure-level breakdown.
• Model hospital resource utilization based on records of all patient admissions in English NHS hospitals.
• Study patterns of NHS-commissioned care in the independent sector based on the included activity data.

Strengths

• Covers all patient admissions to NHS hospitals in England, suggesting a complete national census.
• Provides annual data at the granular level of specific procedures, operations, and interventions.
• Includes NHS-commissioned activity in the independent sector, broadening coverage beyond public hospitals.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and dataset size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data may reflect geographic and systemic biases inherent to the English NHS healthcare system.

Provenance

Source

NHS Digital

Collection Method

Administrative records from hospital episodes.

Time Range

Annual data (specific years not stated).

Freshness

Last updated 2026-07-08 13:32:26.936002; freshness should be verified.

Geography

England