Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 29 January 2021 to Question 142842 on Inflammatory Bowel Disease: Medical Treatments, what plans his Department has to ensure that the NHS RightCare inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) scenario is implemented throughout England to help reduce variations in IBD care.

NHS England and NHS Improvement promote RightCare scenarios to the health system through their website, events, bulletins, trade media articles and social media and are planning to resume these communications as they begin to resume normal services, following from the response phase of the COVID-19 pandemic.

RightCare scenarios should be used as an improvement tool that highlights the difference between a suboptimal pathway of care and an optimal one. The scenarios support local systems to identify where patient outcomes, quality of life and service costs can be improved as the result of shifting the care pathway from a suboptimal journey to an optimal one that consistently delivers timely, evidence-based excellence of care.