Making a difference with HES data
How we work to generate improvements for patients and the health and social care system
How we support the NHS and their suppliers with Hospital Episode Statistics data
CSL are permitted by NHS England to provide analyses based on a subset of HES data to NHS organisations and certain types of NHS suppliers, subject to conditions that ensure responsible and appropriate use of the data. These include, but are not limited to:
-
Limiting the purpose for which analyses can be used to those authorised by our agreement with NHS England:
• Care pathway analysis – providing an understanding of how patients are treated and how treatment differs by factors such as Trust, ICB or patient demographic
• Benchmarking – e.g. comparing actual treatments with best practice and NICE guidelines, and contrasting Trusts and ICBs with each other
• Service evaluation (identification, implementation and monitoring of improvement plans) – to quantify patient subsets to identify opportunities for cost savings or joint working initiatives and to monitor these initiatives once in place - Ensuring that analyses will generate benefits to patients and the health and social care system
- Ensuring only aggregated data is shared, with NHS England guidelines followed to ensure the protection of small numbers (i.e. never any analysis that could be used to identify individuals).
How we ensure appropriate use of data
Before sharing any analysis with client organisations, we go through a process to ensure it would be compliant with our data sharing agreements with NHS England. For example, with NHS supplier organisations this includes:
- An initial review to of the organisation’s type and legitimacy to ensure we are permitted to share analyses with them;
- Discussion with the organisation to ensure they are aware of the restricted characteristics of the data, and that they are prepared to sign up to contractual conditions of use;
- An initial review of the requested purpose of the analysis to ensure it fits within one of our permitted purposes;
- A review of how the analysis will result in benefits to patients and/or the health and social care system.
If we are satisfied that the analysis request has the potential to be permitted under our agreement, the analysis request is then submitted to our NHS Advisory board for review, with data sharing subject to their approval.
NHS Advisory Board review
Our NHS advisory board includes members independent of CSL, who represent the NHS and patients when ultimately deciding whether CSL should provide any analysis.
The NHS Advisory board is made up of 5 members, with the two CSL members communicating the proposed use, and the three independent members deciding on it’s merits:
- Two board members from CSL, who present the applications and answer queries or provide clarifications when required
-
Two members who have spent their careers within the health and social care sector
• Steve has worked as a pharmacist and then as a quality lead for a CCG, before taking on his current senior role for a not-for-profit community benefit society providing NHS healthcare services
• Alan has worked as a clinical coder at a number of NHS Trusts, giving him great familiarity with the HES data. - A patient representative
Summary details of the analysis requests recently reviewed by the NHS Advisory board are provided here.
| Date | Recipient type | Purpose | Summary of analysis and expected benefit | Date Reviewed | Status | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
20/05/2025 |
Pharmaceutical
company |
Joint working |
We have been approached by a pharma company who wish to
understand how patients are treated and flow through the system
for obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (oHCM). They will
use this data to ensure equity of access to treatment, as well as to
improve the quality of patient care by working with Trust/ICBs
through formal joint partnership arrangements to address capacity
constraints. They also want to understand bottlenecks in the
system (e.g. ECHO capacity vs oHCM patient burden), enabling
joint working with the centres with the most challenging
situations. Over time they will then monitor the impact of
initiatives and share results with the NHS. |
20/05/2025 |
Approved | |
20/05/2025 |
Wound care
company |
Pathways |
We were approached by a company that wanted to use HES to
look at procedure volumes by trust. They then wanted to use this
alongside sales data in discussions with HCP’s around potential
costs savings and readmission reductions. |
20/05/2025 |
Rejected |
Following internal
review, we decided this
was not an acceptable
use case due to the
potential promotional
link so rejected the
request. |
09/10/2025 |
Pharmaceutical
company |
Pathways |
Seeking analysis of HES data to help evaluate how both non
promotional and promotional activities may support the uptake of
guideline-directed care in respiratory therapy across the NHS. The
focus is to understand which initiatives most effectively facilitate
the adoption of appropriate treatments in accordance with clinical
best practice—while taking care not to add unnecessary workload
to already stretched healthcare professionals. |
10/10/2025 |
Rejected |
NHS Advisory board
agreed that the balance
of benefit of this
analysis would accrue to
the company rather
than patients and the
NHS, and so data should
not be shared in this
instance. |
09/10/2025 |
Pharmaceutical
company |
Benchmarking |
The company wants to use the data to ensure trusts are following
NICE guidelines. This will ensure a product is not being used off
licence, putting patient safety at risk. The results would be used to
educate trusts who are not following the NICE guidelines.
This client has previously been approved to access the data direct
from NHS England, using the DARs approach. |
10/10/2025 |
Approved | |
22/04/2026 |
Pharmaceutical
company |
Pathways |
We have been approached by a pharma company who wish to
understand how patients are treated and flow through the system
for Amyloidosis (ATTR-CM). They will use this data to ensure
equity of access to treatment, and improve the speed and quality
of patient care by working with Trust/ICBs through joint
partnership arrangements to support and address constraints.
Currently patients are referred to the NAC (National Amyloidosis
Centre) at Royal Free Trust, with Birmingham and Liverpool soon
to have their own local NAC’s. It is felt that a patient’s likelihood
of being referred is vastly impacted by where they live and which
trust they present at, with patients often being misdiagnosed with
Heart Failure. They want to understand these inequalities and
work with the centres with the most challenging situations to
improve diagnosis and patient outcomes. Over time they will then
monitor the impact of initiatives to improve the challenges. |
22/04/2026 |
Approved | |
22/04/2026 |
Medical services
provider |
Joint working,
Pathways,
Benchmarking |
The purpose of this request is to support service evaluation and
pathway understanding in relation to the use of dermal substitutes
within NHS commissioned care (for example in burns, plastic and
reconstructive surgery, and complex wound management).
Specifically, the data will be used to:
* Understand current procedural activity where dermal
substitutes may be used
* Assess variation in practice across NHS providers
* Inform value based discussions on outcomes, resource
utilisation, and pathway design
* Support evidence based engagement with NHS clinicians and
commissioners regarding appropriate use of existing procedures
and care pathways |
22/04/2026 |
Approved |
Content |
22/04/2026 |
Medical services
provider |
Pathways |
We have been approached by a company who wants a full extract
of the number of diagnoses and procedures for all codes, by
trust/site for the last 4 years. They are a provider of services to
pharmaceutical companies, in this instance an online tool showing
trust/site level data. The data will be available for other products
within their company to detect trends they can use in their
modelling of future trends (forecast). In the case of commercial
applications, clients use their services (as well as the data for the
other products mentioned) for them to plan and provide better
healthcare services to institutions (by knowing the estimated
procedure volumes by hospital or regions) by organizing their
customer and technical support groups. The prospect has got data
direct from NHS digital in the past, and are in the process of trying
to get data from NHS England, but as the process was taking
longer than they would wish, they decied to approach us in the
hope of getting data sooner. |
22/04/2026 |
Rejected |
CSL and our NHS
Advisory board were
agreed that data should
not be shared in this
instance on several
grounds, including
permitted organisation
types within our DSA,
commercial use
restrictions, and in
relation to the
prospects current
application process
directly with NHS
England. |
Our Privacy statement relating to the processing of HES data can be found here.