Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether her Department has made a recent assessment of the potential merits of adopting the (a) Infection & Orthopaedic Management (INFORM), (b) British Orthopaedic Association and (c) other guidelines for the treatment and management of prosthetic joint infections.

The UK Health Security Agency manages a national surveillance programme, the Surgical Site Infection (SSI) Surveillance Service, which enhances the quality of patient care by providing hospitals with a framework for collection and comparison of their rates of SSI against national benchmarks. This information is used to review and guide clinical practice, to reduce the risk of infection following surgery. Hip and knee replacements are two of the 17 categories of surgery under surveillance by hospitals. Surveillance in at least one orthopaedic surgical category per quarter, per financial year is mandatory for all National Health Service hospitals undertaking orthopaedic surgery, with hip and knee replacements being the most numerous.