Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how the Government is monitoring whether NHS hospitals have adopted good practice to enable appropriate patient flow through (a) more timely hand-offs between their A&E clinicians and acute physicians, (d) discharge to assess, (c) trusted assessor arrangements, (d) streamlined continuing healthcare processes, (e) seven day discharge capabilities and (f) other methods.

The monitoring of performance against the 95% four hour accident and emergency standard, along with data regarding 12 hour waits for admission, bed occupancy and delayed transfers of care is collected and published monthly by NHS England. Data, published at both a national and a trust level, is available via the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/

From 2015-16, NHS Continuing Healthcare has been included in the assurance processes for clinical commissioning groups (CCGs).This helps NHS England ensure CCG compliance with the ‘National Framework for NHS Continuing Healthcare and NHS-funded Nursing Care (November 2012) (revised)’. The Government’s 2017/18 mandate to the National Health Service outlines that every hospital and its local health and social care partners must have adopted seven day discharge capabilities to help enable appropriate patient flow.

Discharge to Assess and Trusted Assessor arrangements are both monitored by the Better Care Fund (BCF) partners. This is supported by BCF quarterly reports that are submitted by Health and Wellbeing Boards to NHS England as part of the policy framework and planning requirements for 2017-19.

The good practice guide; Focus on improving patient flow for national priorities for acute hospitals 2017 was published by NHS Improvement in July 2017. This can be accessed via the following link:

https://improvement.nhs.uk/resources/good-practice-guide-focus-on-improving-patient-flow/