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 reduce incidents of diagnostic bias within the NHS.

The Government is committed to putting patients first. It is crucial that patients receive the right diagnostic tests, at the right time, in the right place.

The Elective Reform Plan, published in January 2025, commits to transforming and expanding diagnostic services and speeding up waiting times for tests, a crucial part of reducing overall waiting times and returning to the referral-to-treatment standard.

We have wasted no time in getting to work cutting National Health Service waiting lists and ensuring that people have the best possible experience during their care. We promised change, and we’ve delivered early, with a reduction in the waitlists of 160,000 pathways and over two million extra appointments provided, which includes diagnostic tests.

As part of a return to meeting performance standards, the Elective Reform Plan commits to continuing the roll out of the iRefer clinical decision support tool, which supports clinicians to facilitate appropriate diagnostic imaging referrals by using on-demand, real-time evidence-based guidance to improve health and healthcare delivery. This will support the reduction of diagnostic bias by promoting the ordering of the most clinically appropriate tests, especially for clinicians working in emergency medicine, and will reduce the number of unnecessary tests.

The Elective Reform Plan also commits to continuing the support for the education and training of clinicians, to support their development in independent clinical practice.

Very importantly, we know that biases in diagnostic services and other clinical services can lead to harm and worse patient outcomes. The Elective Reform Plan commits to reducing health inequalities by strengthening the accountability and oversight of providers addressing health inequalities in elective care, and by improving the reporting and monitoring of health inequalities and their impacts. This will support the NHS to better identify and address health inequalities.