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Hospital Episode Statistics - Admitted Patient Care, or in short, HES - APC
The Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) database is made up of many data items relating to admitted patient care delivered by NHS hospitals in England. Many of these items form part of the national Commissioning Data Set (CDS), and are generated by the patient administration systems within each hospital.
In addition to the CDS items, HES provides information that is derived from these. For example, the age of the patient is derived from their date of birth. These derivations assist in the production of aggregate summaries (tabulations), and also help ensure patient confidentiality.
HES contains APC data from 1 April 1989-90. Over the years, there have been several changes in the specification and meaning of various data items. From April 2003, this data was available in a normalised form that makes interpretation easier. This has been achieved by modifying the values of certain items for previous years so that, where possible, they conform to contemporary standards. This issue of the Data Dictionary reflects the situation after normalisation.
The above repository also contains information on the structural metadata, for example, explanations of the various forms and events that compose the data are found here. Users of this wiki are encouraged to read through this additional repository to gain further insight into the data.
Consult our own Metadata Catalogue for the APC main table.
Web references: