Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what proportion of patients attending A&E booked an appointment through the booking system since that system was launched.
The NHS 111 first service model, which enabled the booking of appointments into emergency departments, was tested during the summer. The service was subsequently made available across the whole of England from 1 December 2020. The number of bookable appointments is therefore expected to increase over time. Data on accident and emergency (A&E) attendances and booked appointments is published on a monthly basis. A comparison of the proportion of booked appointments with total monthly A&E attendances reported since launch will be available when a full month’s data is reported by the National Health Service for January. This data will be published on 11 February.