The Summer Society for Acute Medicine Benchmarking Audit (SAMBA) 2022 provides a snapshot of the care provided for acutely unwell medical patients in 149 hospitals across the UK over a 24-hour period on Thursday 23rd June 2022.

At the time that SAMBA22 took place, urgent and emergency care services were already under increasing pressure. The number of patients waiting within the Emergency Department for over 12 hours for an inpatient bed has been rising, with all parts of the emergency, acute care and inpatient pathway needing to confront the increasingly complex challenge of maintaining the quality and of care provided.

SAMBA22 aims to assess the same key clinical quality indicators as previously, with some aspects of data collection adapted to begin to expand our understanding of how acute medicine services perform and the care they provide in this changing landscape of urgent care services. It includes 8,344 patients in the SAMBA dataset- containing unit structure and staffing levels, patient demographics (age and gender), severity of illness at presentation using an early warning score (e.g. NEWS2), frailty and pathway of care through the hospital and readmission.

Geography: Recruitment to SAMBA audits are open to all hospitals in the UK receiving acutely unwell medical patients. Non-acute and community hospitals were excluded. The SAMBA dataset draws on contributions from across all four nations of the UK. In 2022, patient data was submitted by 128 hospitals in England, 4 in Northern Ireland, 8 in Scotland, and 6 in Wales.

Data set availability: Data access is available via the PIONEER Hub for projects which will benefit the public or patients. This can be by developing a new understanding of disease, by providing insights into how to improve care, or by developing new models, tools, treatments, or care processes. Data access can be provided to NHS, academic, commercial, policy and third sector organisations. Applications from SMEs are welcome. There is a single data access process, with public oversight provided by our public review committee, the Data Trust Committee. Contact pioneer@uhb.nhs.uk or visit www.pioneerdatahub.co.uk for more details.

Available supplementary data: To supplement the national audit data, PIONEER can provide more granular, longitudinal patient-level insights. This includes matched controls, ambulance and community data, and unstructured data (such as images).

Available supplementary support: Analytics, model build, validation & refinement; A.I. support. Data partner support for ETL (extract, transform & load) processes. Bespoke and “off the shelf” Trusted Research Environment build and run. Consultancy with clinical, patient & end-user and purchaser access/ support. Support for regulatory requirements. Cohort discovery. Data-driven trials and “fast screen” services to assess population size.