Impact of cold daily emergency department attendances baseline

Last updated on Thursday, 11 December 2025 at 03:21pm

Summary

• Topic: impact-of-cold
• Category: syndromic
• API name: impact-of-cold_syndromic_emergencyDepartment_baselineCountsByDay

Rationale

Monitoring trends in daily emergency department attendances can provide an early warning of human public health threats and provide detail to inform public health action. Statistical baselines help us assess the current level and trend of emergency department attendances, compared to historical expectations.

Definition

The metric shows the daily number of attendances at emergency departments by females diagnosed with presentations  associated with cold weather in emergency departments across England. The diagnoses included are: fracture of the femur, wrist or forearm plus cold specific diagnoses of hypothermia, or cold injuries.

Methodology

The statistical baseline is constructed from historical data since April 2018, taking account of any known substantial changes in data collection, population coverage or reporting practices. The COVID-19 pandemic period is excluded.

Impact of cold emergency department attendances are identified from the primary diagnosis of each attendance. Other diagnoses may be recorded but are not used to group syndromic surveillance health indicators. The diagnoses are based on signs or symptoms of an illness and may not have lab confirmation.

We receive an automated daily transfer of anonymised emergency department data from NHS England from the Emergency Care Data Set (ECDS). Not all emergency departments provide data daily, so data reported are restricted to include emergency department attendances where:

• data relate to attendances at a type 01 emergency department (major emergency departments with full resuscitation facilities)
• we received data on patients arriving at that emergency department on all 7 of the most recent 7 days reported on
• we received data for the most recent 7 days reported on within 2 calendar days of patient arrival

When an emergency department meets these criteria, we include all historical data. Which emergency departments are included each week are likely to change. This change in emergency departments included week-to-week means that data published in different weeks cannot be combined to make a longer time series.

Caveats

The data presented are based on a national syndromic surveillance system. They should be used to monitor trends, not estimate numbers of 'cases' of a disease or condition.

The syndromic surveillance indicators group together diagnoses made based on signs or symptoms of an illness, there may not be lab confirmation of a diagnosis.

We do not identify individual emergency departments included in the syndromic surveillance data published each week.