Background Key performance indicators (KPIs) are required to facilitate quality improvement for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Emergency admissions for IBD may represent a possible KPI.

Methods IBD emergency admissions for 2018–2019 from Hospital Episodes Statistics for England were compared per population and per IBD cases with patient-reported quality of care from the IBD Patient Survey 2019. Patient-reported accident and emergency (A&E) attendances and hospital admissions for IBD were also compared with patient-reported quality of care.

Results For 124 IBD services within England we found only a weak and not statistically significant correlation between IBD admissions per 100 000 population and patient-rated quality of care (Spearman’s rho=0.171; p=0.057). Similarly, there was no significant correlation between IBD admissions per case and patient-rated quality of care (Spearman’s rho=0.164; p=0.113). Patients with ≥2 A&E attendances (OR: 0.72, 95% CI: 0.57 to 0.91; p<0.001) were less likely to report quality of IBD care as good or very good compared with those without A&E attendances. Patients with ≥2 admissions were less likely to rate their care as good or very good (OR: 0.75, 95% CI: 0.65 to 0.88; p<0.0001) compared with those without hospital admissions.

Conclusions There is a clear association for individual patients with ≥2 admissions or A&E attendances with a lower perceived quality of care. In contrast we found no correlation on a per-unit basis for IBD admissions derived from Hospital Episode Statistics with patient-assessed quality of care. Further work is required to determine whether hospital admissions could be a useful KPI for IBD.