Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what guidance his Department has issued to Integrated Care Boards on clinically prioritising children whose symptoms are deteriorating while awaiting paediatric referral allocation.

The Government is committed to ensuring that patient outcomes will be at the heart of building a National Health Service that is fit for the future.

National planning guidance sets expectations for systems to prioritise clinically urgent cases and those at risk of deterioration. The NHS triages patients waiting for elective care at a local level, ensuring the order in which patients are seen reflects clinical judgement on need as well as taking into account overall wait time.

We have committed to ensuring that integrated care boards and providers have interventions in place to reduce disparities for groups who face additional waiting list challenges, and primary and secondary care clinicians are to improve e-RS functionality, a national digital platform for referring patients into elective care, by including data to enable better prioritisation of children and young people.

The clinically led Getting It Right First Time children and young people programme continue to work with providers to ensure they are implementing best practice to improve children’s outcomes and waiting times across all medical and surgical specialities.