Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to reduce waiting lists for treatment for chronic migraines.

The Government does recognise that patients, including those with migraines, have been let down for too long whilst they wait for the care they need. The Government is committed to putting patients first. This means making sure that patients are seen on time, and ensuring that people have the best possible experience during their care.

We have made a commitment that 92% of patients should wait no longer than 18 weeks from Referral to Treatment within our first term. This includes those waiting for treatment for migraines. As a first step to achieving this, we will deliver an additional 2 million operations, scans, and appointments across all specialities during our first year in Government, which is equivalent to 40,000 per week.  The Government announced £1.5 billion of new capital investment in the Autumn Budget, including investment for new diagnostic scanners and surgical hubs. This investment in scanners will build capacity for over 30,000 additional procedures and 1.25 million diagnostic tests as they come online.

There are a number of initiatives supporting service improvement and better care for patients with migraines in England, including the Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) Programme for Neurology, the RightCare Headache and Migraine Toolkit, and the Neurology Transformation Programme (NTP).

The GIRFT National Specialty Report made recommendations designed to improve services nationally and to support the National Health Service to deliver care more equitably across the country. It makes several recommendations in relation to improving recognition and diagnosis of migraines by general practitioners. Additionally, the RightCare Headache and Migraine Toolkit sets out key priorities for improving care for patients with migraines, which includes correct identification and diagnosis of headache disorders.

The NTP has developed a model of integrated care for neurology services to support integrated care boards to deliver the right service, at the right time, for all neurology patients, including providing care closer to home. The NTP has developed an online, interactive adult neurology dashboard to support systems to understand their local neurology landscape and benchmark against other integrated care boards in England. It sets out key metrics and visualisations for neurology services locally, providing information about the scope and quality of local neurology services using existing whole population, whole pathway data.

The Royal College of General Practitioners has developed two e-learning modules about migraines and cluster headaches, which the aim to raise awareness amongst primary care clinicians about the different types of migraines and their associated symptoms, and how to differentiate.

Over the last four years, a new class of drugs, calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) inhibitors, have been made available on the NHS for the prevention and treatment of episodic and chronic migraines. On 15 May 2024, Atogepant became the latest CGRP inhibitor for which the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has published guidance. The NICE recommended Atogepant for use as a preventive medication for the treatment of migraines on the NHS in England.