THE HEALTH FOUNDATION: The Health Foundation is an independent charity working to improve health and the quality of health care in the United Kingdom.

Data-sharing agreement from NHS Digital registers of approved data releases, 2014–2019. Evidence status: source reported.

Organisation: THE HEALTH FOUNDATION
Source reference: DARS-NIC-35820-Y3H1M-v0.6
Jurisdiction: England
Licence: Open Government Licence v3.0, subject to NHS England terms and exclusions

Register reference: DARS-NIC-35820-Y3H1M-v0.6
Agreement period: not published to no end date published
For commercial purposes (as marked in the register): Not stated
Release files listed by NHS England: 16

Data approved

Hospital Episode Statistics Admitted Patient Care
Hospital Episode Statistics Accident and Emergency

Objective, as published

The Health Foundation is an independent charity working to improve health and the quality of health care in the United Kingdom. The Health Foundation is requesting access to data aiming to inform public discussions about the focus, design and effects of policies intended to improve the quality of health care in the United Kingdom or reduce costs. The project will inform policy makers and the NHS about the variability in quality of health care in England, and thus help to identify priority areas for improving health and social care A “weekend effect” on mortality following emergency admission is well established. However, there is still uncertainty if this effect is due to patient mix or organisational characteristics. This project will be in two phases: Firstly, the Health Foundation will aim to understand the weekend effect and variation across all days of the week, optimising risk adjustment (case-mix), exploring the effect of organisational and staff-related factors and examining variability in the weekend effect between providers (cross-sectional). This analysis will inform a second phase, aiming to identify mortality trends (weekday and weekend) over time, classify English hospitals by observed trajectories and investigate relationships between ‘phenotypes’ and hospital characteristics (time-series). The study follows the ‘phenotyping’ approach used by Xu et al. (2014) for patients undergoing an emergency admission.

Expected benefits, as published

The Health Foundation has strong links with NHS teams, national policymakers (e.g., NHS England) and patient advocacy groups. The Health Foundation provide leadership and advice on quality improvement as well as commentary on health care policy. The Health Foundations analysis of HES data will inform these activities. The Health Foundation assess the impact using objective measures (e.g., number of publication downloads, publication citations and attendances at events and seminars) as well as record specific instances where the work of The Health Foundation has informed decision making for the NHS and improved the quality of care ultimately delivered to patients. Due to these strong links with the health service, the Health Foundation is in a good position to reach as much beneficiaries a…

Source: https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/2019/http://content.digital.nhs.uk/media/23861/Release-Register-December-16---February-17/xls/Release_Register__December_16_-_February_17.xlsx. Captured 2026-10-30.

Limitations: Agreement as recorded in an NHS Digital register of approved data releases (2014–2019), retrieved from the UK Government Web Archive. That register lists releases made in its period and the agreement's purpose statement as it then stood; it gives no agreement dates, and the agreement may have changed since. Imported only where a paper quotes a reference no current register holds.