Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment has been made has made of whether pink sputum should be part of the critical illness assessment in the NHS pathway review.

NHS Pathways includes specific questions designed to determine if any blood has been coughed up by a patient. These questions are continually reviewed in order to enhance and refine the product. The NHS Pathways team is currently reviewing whether asking a caller about ‘pink frothy sputum (or phlegm)’ in the relevant symptomatic pathways is required in the context of the wider critical illness assessment.