The Commissioning Data Sets (CDS) are the primary mechanism for the national reporting of secondary care activity which is either NHS funded and/or provided by NHS organisations. They comprise a series of patient level data sets (Types) intended to deliver robust, comprehensive, nationally consistent and comparable person-based information.

Type 011: Emergency Care Data Set (ECDS) is the CDS Type for emergency care services, and allows for:

• the capture of information about
  • the complexity and acuity of attending patients 
  • the causes of rising demand
  • the value added by emergency departments
• the capture of diagnostic data to ensure an enhanced understanding of need, activity and outcomes 
• consistent monitoring of data across local and national initiatives 
• support for injury surveillance, such that it will be possible to identify patterns that may be amenable to targeted interventions and improved public health.

Data for all CDS Types are submitted to NHS Digital’s Secondary Uses Service (SUS+) and form the basis of the Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) data set.

The key changes made in ECDS version 4.0 include:

• Recording of Virtual Care (including virtual consultations)
• Recording Same Day Emergency Care (SDEC) activity
• Recording of Hot Clinics
• Deprecation of EC Service Type 04 – ‘NHS walk in centres’
• Recording activity relating to prevention of violence and injury / Injury Sharing to Tackle Violence (ISTV)
• Introduction of new Assessment Scales
• Expansion of clinical data terms
• Other minor changes