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 decrease waiting times for (a) urgent and (b) routine cardiology appointments in Surrey and Hampshire.

Too many people have been left in limbo waiting for National Health Service appointments. The Government has committed to returning to the constitutional standard that 92% of patients wait no longer than 18 weeks from referral to treatment. Performance is currently at 58.9% for cardiology services in the Surrey Heartlands Integrated Care Board (ICB), and 59.3% for cardiology services in the Hampshire and Isle of Wight ICB. As a first step, we have already delivered on our pledge of an additional two million operations, scans, and appointments across elective services, nationally, between July and November 2024, compared to the same period in 2023, seven months ahead of schedule.

Cardiology has been identified as one of five national priority specialties which will undergo clinically driven pathway transformation in the Elective Reform Plan, published in January 2025. Planned reforms to cardiology care will include increasing specialist input earlier in care pathways, in turn reducing the number of unnecessary diagnostics undertaken, by developing standard pathways for common outpatient presentations, such as palpitations, and increasing timely access to cardiac diagnostic tests.

In addition to national efforts, the Department and NHS England are supporting a range of local actions in the South East region to reduce the time patients spend waiting for specialist cardiology care, both for urgent and routine appointments. For example, delays for echocardiography (ECG) are a key challenge in the Hampshire and Isle of Wight ICB. Local action is focussed on improving ECG access by standardising pathways, to remove unwarranted variation for patients, and rolling out wider direct access to diagnostic tests through community diagnostic centre provision, rather than in hospitals. We are also supporting local general practices and trusts, through their ICBs, to increase volumes of Advice and Guidance for cardiology, which significantly reduces the time patients spend waiting for care.