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 (a) help reduce delays in continuing healthcare reviews for previously unassessed periods of care and (b) reduce the associated administration.

The Department and NHS England published guidance in 2023 for assessing requests for Previously Unassessed Periods of Care (PUPoC). This guidance sets out how integrated care boards (ICBs) should approach and address PUPoC assessment requests. The guidance is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/continuing-healthcare-previously-unassessed-periods-of-care/dealing-with-requests-for-assessments-of-previously-unassessed-periods-of-care-from-1-april-2012

The guidance states that ICBs should set their own reasonable and proportionate timeframes for responding to requests. It provides best practice examples for how ICBs should complete PUPoC requests, based on the timeframe for the unassessed period of care and the completion of the required application and consent forms.

NHS England publishes quarterly statistics relating to the activity of NHS Continuing Healthcare and National Health Service-funded Nursing Care which includes PUPoC data, reporting on the number of cases agreed eligible, both total and per 50,000. This is available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/nhs-chc-fnc/