Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what research his Department has undertaken or assessed on the relationship between the distance travelled to an A&E department and the likelihood of fatality after admission.

Clinical consensus is that for patient outcomes and mortality what matters is the time from becoming ill to receiving specialist, life-saving care. That is why we are developing ambulance services that act as mobile assessment and treatment services and networked urgent and emergency care services to ensure patients are treated in the facility best equipped to provide whatever care is needed. For some patients requiring specialist care this may be in a hospital that is further away.

NHS England, in its guidance ‘Planning, assuring and delivering service changes for patients’, emphasise that NHS change planners include an analysis of distance and travel times, the impact of these on transport users, as well as the ambulance service.