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Gynaecology: Health Services

Answer

This information is not held centrally. We are committed to cutting waiting lists and improving waiting times across the board, ensuring patients get the care they need sooner.

The Renewed Women’s Health Strategy for England, published in April 2026, represents a decisive shift towards addressing longstanding failings in women’s health outcomes, experiences, and access to care.

As part of the renewed strategy, we are supporting integrated care boards to introduce a single point of access for all non-urgent referrals to gynaecology and women's health services to speed up access to better treatment. By introducing a single point of access, when general practitioners (GPs) refer a woman to a specialist, they will be directed through triage immediately to the most appropriate professional, whether this be in the community, secondary care, or for a diagnostic procedure.

We are redesigning clinical pathways for the most common clinical pathways, including heavy periods, menopause, and uro-gynaecology. This will standardise care pathways and remove unnecessary procedural delays. These redesigned pathways will create roadmaps for health systems to use and adapt for local needs that will enable women to move more quickly through the system and reach the level of care they need with fewer appointments.

A core part of the improved women’s health offer set out in the Renewed Women’s Health Strategy will be neighbourhood women's health services. Neighbourhood women’s healthcare is delivered by both a range of providers and digitally, giving women access not just to GPs and community specialists in women’s health, but to other services including pelvic physiotherapists, pharmacies, and psychological support services.

Next year we will establish an online hospital, NHS Online, which will give people on certain pathways the choice of getting the specialist care they need from their home. It will connect patients with clinicians across the country through secure, online appointments accessed through the NHS App.

NHS Online will help to reduce patient waiting times, delivering the equivalent of up to 8.5 million appointments and assessments in its first three years, four times more than an average trust, while enhancing patient choice and control over their care. Menstrual problems, including those caused by endometriosis and menopause, are prioritised as two of the first pathways to be delivered through community-based services and the new virtual hospital, NHS Online.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

12449

Session

2026-27

Subjects

Health services Gynaecology

Link

View this Written question on www.parliament.uk