Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps NHS England is taking to monitor uptake of its Using patient initiated follow-ups as part of the NHS covid-19 recovery guidance published on 7 August 2020.
NHS England and NHS Improvement are working with a range of rapid adopter sites to implement patient-initiated follow-ups as part of the restoration of services following COVID-19. This includes joint work to monitor uptake in these sites. Alongside this, 50 trusts provided information detailing their implementation of patient-initiated follow-up this summer. For the longer term, NHS England and NHS Improvement are working with NHS Digital and other organisations to seek to capture further data on patient initiated follow-up usage in future.
The initial guidance was prepared in rapid response to the need to restore outpatient services following COVID-19. The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges patient lay committee was involved in the development of the guidance. We are working nationally with the NHS England and NHS Improvement personalised care group to engage further with patients and patient organisations as part of the ongoing development of supplementary guidance and tools for local systems. The guidance includes a recommendation that providers/systems carry out local patient engagement as part of implementation.