Accident and Emergency Departments
(asked on 11th December 2017) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what recent discussions (a) he, (b) Ministers of his Department and (c) staff in his Department held with (i) professional bodies, (ii) other stakeholders on the decision by NHS England not to publish the number of NHS hospitals that issue operational pressures escalation levels alerts; and if he will make a statement.
My Rt. hon. Friend the Secretary of State and his Ministers meet with a variety of stakeholders on a regular basis, as do staff in the Department.
The Operational Pressures Escalation Level framework is a useful tool that may be used locally to monitor operational pressures. NHS England, however, uses a wider and more in depth number of data sources through winter to help monitor performance and ensure appropriate responses to specific pressures. These include information on bed availability and occupancy, cancelled operations, accident and emergency waits, ambulance performance and delayed transfers of care. In addition, winter daily situation reports are also collected from acute trusts across the country each weekday and indicate where there are any winter pressures. These are published on a weekly basis.
Winter daily situation reports are published by NHS England and can accessed here: