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Written question asked by Sarah Wollaston (Conservative) on Tuesday, 26 April 2016, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Thursday, 28 April 2016. It was answered by Jane Ellison (Conservative) on Thursday, 5 May 2016 on behalf of the Department of Health.

Out-patients

Question

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to collect data on (a) the number of patients who are required to return to hospital for a review or follow-up out-patient appointment or procedure and (b) the length of time between such patients' initial appointment and that review or follow-up appointment.

Answer

Such data are already collected in Hospital Episode Statistics, a data warehouse managed by the Health and Social Care Information Centre that includes details of all admissions and outpatient appointments at National Health Service and independent sector hospitals in England. A summary report of the data published for 2014-15 is at:

http://www.hscic.gov.uk/catalogue/PUB19608/hosp-outp-acti-2014-15-summ-repo-rep.pdf

Information on length of time between first and follow-up appointments has not been published because there are no national standards for the appropriate intervals, which will vary between different services or specialties, and between individual patients, depending on the severity of the condition and clinical decision making.

Secondary information

Type
Written question
Reference
35493
Session
2015-16
Subjects
Databases Out-patients Waiting lists
Contains statistics
Yes
Link
View this Written question on www.parliament.uk