Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the guidance by NHS England entitled Referral optimisation for people with skin conditions, published on 27 September 2022, what steps his Department is taking to help support the adoption of referral optimisation.

The Department is supporting the National Health Service to improve outpatient services, including referral optimisation.

NHS England’s Outpatient Recovery and Transformation Programme runs a series of Action on Outpatients webinars to raise awareness of outpatient improvement initiatives. In December 2022, the series focused on outpatient referral optimisation, drawing on principles from NHS England guidance on referral optimisation for people with skin conditions, published September 2022.