Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many people were admitted to emergency departments where substance misuse of (a) drugs and (b) alcohol was a contributing factor for their reason for attendance in the last year.

The information requested is not held in the format requested.

The number of people attending accident and emergency departments is not collected, as individual patients may have multiple attendances. However, the following table shows data on the total number of emergency department attendances for which drugs and alcohol were recorded as a primary or a secondary diagnosis in 2020/21.

Source: NHS Digital

Note:

In 2020-21, 74.8% of attendances in the Emergency Care Data Set had a valid code recorded in the diagnosis field. Therefore, it is possible that the figures provided may be an under-representation of actual activity.