Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the adequacy of the implementation of NHS England’s Renal Services Transformation Programme by local NHS Integrated Care Systems.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidance, Chronic kidney disease: Assessment and management [NG203], updated in November 2021, sets out best practice for clinicians in the diagnosis and management of chronic kidney disease (CKD). The guidance covers the care and treatment of patients at risk of CKD. It includes recommendations on the monitoring of patients at risk of CKD and aims to prevent or delay the progression of the disease. The guidance is available at the following link:

https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng203

NHS England, through the Renal Services Transformation Programme and regional renal networks, is implementing initiatives to provide better, integrated care, reduce health inequalities, and focus on the prevention and timely intervention for kidney disease. Regional renal clinical networks have already prioritised CKD diagnosis and the prevention of disease progression within their core function. This includes assessing the concordance with NICE guidance around the use of drugs to mitigate the consequences of CKD. Regional renal clinical networks also prioritise CKD diagnosis and prevention within their transformation ambitions, facilitating earlier treatment. This includes considerations to develop a unified approach to testing populations at risk of developing CKD, and includes raising awareness of diagnostic tools like urine albumin creatinine tests, enabling CKD diagnosis at stages 1 and 2. NHS England aims to improve awareness and access to these important urine and blood tests across primary and secondary care. In addition, the transformation programme launched a renal toolkit earlier last year, for use by systems, that outlines principles to support better management of patients identified with CKD throughout their patient journey.

No assessment has been made of the adequacy of the implementation of NHS England’s Renal Services Transformation Programme by local National Health Service integrated care systems.