Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department has made an assessment of the adequacy of the implementation of the (a) actions and (b) recommendations made by the Getting it Right First Time specialty report on gastroenterology in reducing unwarranted variation in care, published on 9 September 2021.

The Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) programme data for gastroenterology is now available on the Model Health System, helping teams gauge their performance and work to recover services impacted by the pandemic. More than 70 metrics are available, relating to endoscopy, hepatobiliary, luminal gastroenterology, and nutrition services. These enable trusts and system users to see their performance across areas such as emergency admission rates and day case rates.

GIRFT is working with the NHS England Endoscopy Transformation Team to carry out visits to teams in the National Health Service regions across England, to encourage networking and quality improvement by utilising updated data metrics. A National Endoscopy Dashboard has been developed and is published on the NHS Futures website.

Joint work is ongoing between GIRFT and various specialty societies, such as the British Society of Gastroenterology (BSG) and Royal College of Physicians (RCP), helping to reinforce and disseminate recommendations from the report. This joint working has also resulted in the development of resources to support with implementation. These include:

- The BSG Quality Standards Framework;

- RCP Modern Outpatient Care guidance;

- GIRFT Clinically-led Outpatient Guidance; and

- National audit of ERCP (endoscopic retrograde cholangio pancreatography) practitioners & ERCP services.

GIRFT is also working with 51 trusts as part of a ‘Further Faster’ pilot to deliver rapid clinical transformation with the aim of reducing 52-week waits. The pilot brings together clinicians and operational teams with the challenge of collectively going ‘further and faster’ to transform patient pathways and working to reduce unnecessary appointments and improve access and waiting times for patients.

Clinical transformation groups have been established across 16 specialties, and some of the biggest reductions in waiting times to date among Cohort 1, encompassing 25 trusts, have been in gastroenterology. Trusts in the pilot have also been issued with a GIRFT Gastroenterology Further Faster Handbook to support their ongoing improvement.