The Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) provide a wealth of information on disease incidence, prevalence, treatment and outcomes. HES can be used to: inform the development of health and wellbeing strategies and strategic needs assessments; support the provision of public health advice to NHS commissioners; and enable the benchmarking and comparative analysis of health outcomes for a local population. Approved Local Authority public health applicants for the HES Data Extract Service will be provided with access to:
Updates for these data sets will be provided on a rolling monthly basis. Approved users of the service will be able to access record-level pseudonymised data. The extracts provided by the HSCIC will contain full individual HES records but with all identifiable information removed and certain fields replaced with derived data. The data may only be used to support the statutory public health duties of the local authority, and the public health team will be responsible for ensuring that confidentiality is protected and the conditions on the use of the data are adhered to.
All requests to access record-level data from the HSCIC are handled by the Data Access Request Service (DARS) which is explained in detail on the DARS webpage. All applicants wishing to access HSCIC data must have a Data Sharing Framework Contract (DSFC) in place, together with a data sharing agreement for each purpose.
A standard application template has been produced for local authorities wishing to access pseudonymised data through the HES Data Extract Service.
Requests for further information on the HES Data Extract Service for Local Authority public health teams can be directed to the HSCIC at enquiries@hscic.gov.uk citing reference 'LAPH HES Extract' and the name of the local authority in the email subject field.
