Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to improve efficiency in operating theatres.

NHS Improvement has an ongoing programme to help trusts reduce their waiting times for patients by making better use of their theatre time. This has been supported by their theatre productivity report ‘Operating theatres: opportunities to reduce waiting lists’ which includes insights to support clinicians, managers and hospital leaders to further challenge themselves to improve how care is delivered and how valuable theatre resources and clinical expertise can be best used. NHS Improvement is taking steps to help trusts meet the challenges outlined in the report, including:

- Running workshops in the five English National Health Service regions so that trusts can learn from those that have made productivity and capacity gains through structured improvement work;

- Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) is supporting trusts to deliver quality and productivity improvements for patients in many surgical specialties; and

- NHS Improvement’s regional teams are supporting trusts with theatre improvement work, using the insights from our analysis and drawing on expert advice from the GIRFT programme.

‘Operating theatres: opportunities to reduce waiting lists’ is available via the following link:

https://improvement.nhs.uk/resources/operating-theatres-opportunities-reduce-waiting-lists/