Analysing Emergency and Urgent Care System Demand in Yorkshire and Humber: A Data-linkage Study of Pre-hospital, Emergency Department and Out of Hours Service Data

There is increased demand on emergency departments (ED) across the UK. The services are becoming stretched and as a result waiting times are increasing and patient care is suffering.

By linking together patient data from different hospitals and services across Yorkshire, researchers are able to build a more complete picture of how emergency and urgent care (UEC) services in the region function.

This picture will help researchers understand the flow of patients through EUC services, to understand what the most common health issues are and to better plan community services in the future. The anonymous data can help scientists understand EUC services across an entire region and suggest improvements in a much more synchronised way.

Health service managers will also be able to understand how one ED in Yorkshire compares to another. By re-using existing data researchers will also allow hospitals to learn lessons from each other so that each local service can improve and deliver better care for its patients.

In the future, this information will help researchers to plan ahead and forecast disease outbreaks. The data used will, over time, tell a story that will help deliver better and more targeted care.

The aim of the research project is to build a unique dataset based on expertise already being developed across the Yorkshire and Humber region. We will collect routine NHS data from a number of providers of EUC and link the data to provide a coherent picture of EUC demand. This rich data source will allow the EUC services to be viewed as a whole system, enabling demand on the system by patients to be analysed as well as the flow of patients through the system.