During the financial year 2022/23, the busiest hospital provider in England was the University Hospitals Birmingham Foundation Trust with over 333 thousand admissions. This trust encompasses four hospitals in the Birmingham area, one of the largest urban areas in England. The second busiest trust this year was the Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust with approximately 298 thousand admissions.

Accident and emergency admissions

From April to June 2023, there were around 6.5 million accident and emergency (A&E) attendees (including at A&E departments not in hospitals) in England. After the drop in A&E attendances during the COVID-pandemic, numbers have risen again to previous levels, with a trend towards an increasing number of individuals seeking emergency care. Over three percent of A&E attendees in England in 2022/23 were first diagnosed with a sprained ankle, knee, wrist, or foot, and over four percent were diagnosed with a respiratory infection. Furthermore, 7.4 percent were found to have ‘no abnormality detected’ which could be detrimental to a service that is already stretched.

Waiting too long

Over the last few years in the A&E department, the NHS has been falling behind the target that 95 percent of patients should be seen within four hours of arrival. The last time this target was reached was back in July 2015. Not just the A&E department, but other services also require lengthy waits. It is no wonder that the majority of respondents surveyed were fairly or very dissatisfied with the length of wait for many aspects of NHS care. Moreover, in general, levels of satisfaction with the way NHS runs is at an all time low.

This report shows monthly numbers of NHS Hospital and Community Health Services (HCHS) staff working in NHS Trusts and other core organisations in England (excluding primary care staff). Data are available as headcount and full-time equivalents and for all months from 30 September 2009 onwards. These data are a summary of the validated data extracted from the NHS HR and Payroll system. Additional statistics on staff in NHS Trusts and other core organisations and information for NHS Support Organisations and Central Bodies are published each: September (showing June statistics) December/January (showing September statistics) March (showing December statistics) June (showing March statistics) Quarterly NHS Staff Earnings, monthly NHS Staff Sickness Absence reports, and data relating to the General Practice workforce and the Independent Healthcare Provider workforce are also available via the Related Links below. We welcome feedback on the methodology and tables within this publication. Please email us with your comments and suggestions, clearly stating Monthly HCHS Workforce as the subject heading, via enquiries@nhsdigital.nhs.uk or 0300 303 5678.

As of February 2024, the National Health Service (NHS) in England employed a total of 1.34 million staff members on a full-time equivalent (FTE) basis, including 140 thousand HCHS doctors. This is less than the number of NHS staff on a headcount basis, as not all employees work full-time. This makes the NHS the largest employer in England. This statistic shows the number of staff on a FTE basis in the NHS Hospitals and Community Health Services (HCHS) in England as of February 2024, by staff group.

This is a publication on maternity activity in English NHS hospitals. This report examines data relating to delivery and birth episodes in 2021-22, and the booking appointments for these deliveries. This annual publication covers the financial year ending March 2022. Data is included from both the Hospital Episodes Statistics (HES) data warehouse and the Maternity Services Data Set (MSDS). HES contains records of all admissions, appointments and attendances for patients admitted to NHS hospitals in England. The HES data used in this publication are called 'delivery episodes'. The MSDS collects records of each stage of the maternity service care pathway in NHS-funded maternity services, and includes information not recorded in HES. The MSDS is a maturing, national-level dataset. In April 2019 the MSDS transitioned to a new version of the dataset. This version, MSDS v2.0, is an update that introduced a new structure and content - including clinical terminology, in order to meet current clinical practice and incorporate new requirements. It is designed to meet requirements that resulted from the National Maternity Review, which led to the publication of the Better Births report in February 2016. This is the third publication of data from MSDS v2.0 and data from 2019-20 onwards is not directly comparable to data from previous years. This publication shows the number of HES delivery episodes during the period, with a number of breakdowns including by method of onset of labour, delivery method and place of delivery. It also shows the number of MSDS deliveries recorded during the period, with breakdowns including the baby's first feed type, birthweight, place of birth, and breastfeeding activity; and the mothers' ethnicity and age at booking. There is also data available in a separate file on breastfeeding at 6 to 8 weeks. The count of Total Babies includes both live and still births, and previous changes to how Total Babies and Total Deliveries were calculated means that comparisons between 2019-20 MSDS data and later years should be made with care. The MethodfDelivery measure counting babies has been replaced by the DeliveryMethodBabyGroup measure which counts deliveries, and the smoking at booking and folic acid status measures have been renamed - these changes have been made to better align this annual publication with the Maternity Services Monthly Statistics publication. Information on how all measures are constructed can be found in the HES Metadata and MSDS Metadata files provided below. In this publication we have also included an interactive Power BI dashboard to enable users to explore key NHS Maternity Statistics measures. The purpose of this publication is to inform and support strategic and policy-led processes for the benefit of patient care. This report will also be of interest to researchers, journalists and members of the public interested in NHS hospital activity in England. Any feedback on this publication or dashboard can be provided to enquiries@nhsdigital.nhs.uk, under the subject “NHS Maternity Statistics”.

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

The National Patient Survey Programme is one of the largest patient survey programmes in the world. It provides an opportunity to monitor experiences of health and provides data to assist with registration of trusts and monitoring on-going compliance. Understanding what people think about the care and treatment they receive is crucial to improving the quality of care being delivered by healthcare organisations. One way of doing this is by asking people who have recently used the health service to tell the Care Quality Commission (CQC) about their experiences.

The CQC will use the results from the surveys in the regulation, monitoring and inspection of NHS acute trusts (or, for community mental health service user surveys, providers of mental health services) in England. Data are used in CQC Insight, an intelligence tool which identifies potential changes in quality of care and then supports deciding on the right regulatory response. Survey data will also be used to support CQC inspections.

Each survey has a different focus. These include patients' experiences in outpatient and accident and emergency departments in Acute Trusts, and the experiences of people using mental health services in the community.

History of the programme

The National Patient Survey Programme began in 2002, and was then conducted by the Commission for Health Improvement (CHI), along with the Commission for Healthcare Audit and Inspection (CHAI). Administration of the programme was taken over by the Healthcare Commission in time for the 2004 series. On 1 April 2009, the CQC was formed, which replaced the Healthcare Commission.

Further information about the National Patient Survey Programme may be found on the CQC Patient Survey Programme web pages.

The Inpatients Survey, 2013 covered issues that affect the quality of care that patients receive and were identified by patients as important to them. Topics include: admission; the hospital and ward; relationships with healthcare professionals; care and treatment; pain; operations and procedures; and discharge.

Main Topics:

The questionnaire covered: admission to hospital; the accident and emergency department; waiting list/planned admission circumstances and other admissions; the hospital and ward; doctors; nurses; care and treatment; operations and procedures; leaving hospital.

For anonymity and confidentiality reasons a number of variables have been removed or recoded: questions Q74-78 have been removed due to very low numbers at trust level for many sub groups; Q72 has been recoded to use information from the sample file where this was missing; and Q73 has been recoded to use information from the sample file where this was missing and grouped.

Users should note that approval for the 2013 survey was obtained under Section 251 of the NHS Act 2006. This approval allows the common law duty of confidentiality to be put aside in order to enable the processing of patient identifiable information without consent. The approval granted does not allow the Care Quality Commission to share any variables that have been removed from the dataset.

Supports trauma-receiving Trusts by providing each trauma unit with case mix adjusted outcome analysis, performance of key process measures and comparisons of trauma care.