HES Outpatients (HESOP) Dataset#
Last modified: 21 Oct 2026
Outpatient appointments at NHS hospitals in England.
More information about this dataset is available here.
1. Summary#
Data are collected about all outpatient appointments at NHS hospitals in England. Data collected include demographics, date and type of consultation, treatment specialty, referral source and waiting time, clinical diagnosis and procedures performed.
| Dataset Descriptor | Dataset-specific Information |
|---|---|
| Name of Dataset in TRE | NHSE_HESOP |
| Citation (APA) | Data Services, NHS England (NHSE). (2025). NHS England: Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) Outpatients Dataset. UK Longitudinal Linkage Collaboration (UK LLC). https://doi.org/10.71760/ukllc-dataset-00363-04 |
| Download Citation | Citeproc JSON BibTeX RIS |
| Series | NHS England |
| Owner | NHS England |
| Copyright | Copyright © (2026), NHS England. Data re-used with the permission of NHS England. All rights reserved. |
| Temporal Coverage in the TRE | 04/2003 - ongoing |
| Geographical Coverage | England |
| Participant Count | 274236 |
| Number of Variables | 243 |
| Number of Observations | 12916345 |
| Key Link | https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/data-tools-and-services/data-services/hospital-episode-statistics |
| Keywords | None |
| Latest Extract Date | 2024-04-26 |
| Specific Restrictions to Data Use | A Codelist must be completed. |
| Build a Data Request | https://explore.ukllc.ac.uk/ |
2. Metrics#
| Cohort | Participant Count |
|---|---|
| AIRWAVE | 36756 |
| ALSPAC | 5615 |
| BCS70 | 6775 |
| BIB | 14818 |
| ELSA | 7232 |
| EPICN | 14834 |
| EXCEED | 9923 |
| GLAD | 70069 |
| MCS | 18177 |
| NCDS58 | 7261 |
| NEXTSTEP | 5522 |
| NIHRBIO_COPING | 16368 |
| NSHD46 | 2949 |
| TEDS | 7798 |
| TRACKC19 | 13867 |
| TWINSUK | 12960 |
| UKHLS | 6263 |
| UKREACH | 17049 |
3. Version History#
| Version | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Version Date | 21 Dec 2022 | 13 Apr 2023 | 26 Apr 2024 | 09 Sep 2025 |
| Number of Variables | 149 | 149 | 149 | 243 |
| Number of Observations | 6418599 | 8013593 | 8575150 | 12916345 |
| DOI | 10.71760/ukllc-dataset-00363-01 | 10.71760/ukllc-dataset-00363-02 | 10.71760/ukllc-dataset-00363-03 | 10.71760/ukllc-dataset-00363-04 |
| Change Log | 10.71760/ukllc-dataset-00363-01/activities | 10.71760/ukllc-dataset-00363-02/activities | 10.71760/ukllc-dataset-00363-03/activities | 10.71760/ukllc-dataset-00363-04/activities |
4. Documentation#
We are currently building a documentation storage system which will host useful documents related to datasets and data owners. We will surface these documents on Guidebook.
5. Useful Syntax#
Below we will include syntax that may be helpful to other researchers in the UK LLC TRE. For longer scripts, we will include a snippet of the code plus a link to the UK LLC GitHub repository where you can find the full scripts.