Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, for what reason there has been a decline in the NHS Continuing Healthcare referral conversion rate in each year since 2017-18; and if he will make a statement.
Data on NHS Continuing Healthcare (CHC) eligibility rates is published quarterly by NHS England at the following link:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/nhs-chc-fnc/
Data on the number of people who apply and are found ineligible at the initial checklist assessment stage for CHC is not currently collected. NHS England will collect and manage CHC checklist data as part of an upcoming patient level data set. Data on the CHC referral conversion rate is available since 2017-18. However, as the 2019-20 data has been significantly impacted by COVID-19 we do not consider there to be sufficient data points to undertake meaningful trend analysis.
We have interpreted ‘first review’ to mean how many people are found to be eligible following a review at the local resolution stage. Prior to 2018-19 this data was not collected. We have interpreted ‘on appeal’ to mean how many people are found to be eligible in full or partially following a request for an independent review. Data on the number of people found to be partially or fully eligible in England and Herts Valley Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) is shown in the following tables:
England
Financial Year | Number found partially eligible | Number found fully eligible |
2017-18 | 51 | 90 |
2018-19 | 94 | 100 |
2019-20 | 196 | 222 |
Herts Valley CCG
Financial Year | Number found partially eligible | Number found fully eligible |
2017-18 | 1 | 1 |
2018-19 | 2 | 2 |
2019-20 | 6 | 5 |