Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to protect patients from (1) unregulated, and (2) unqualified, non-medical ultrasound practitioners.

The Government is clear that the regulatory oversight of health and care professions must be proportionate to the risks to the public. Statutory regulation of healthcare professionals should only be used where the risks to patient protection cannot be addressed through employer oversight, system regulation, or accredited voluntary registration.

Services offering diagnostic and screening procedures that use ultrasound to examine the body must register with the Care Quality Commission (CQC). Providers must demonstrate that they provide enough suitably qualified, competent, skilled, and experienced staff to meet the needs of the people using the service to comply with the CQC’s regulatory requirements to operate.

Some sonographers are qualified and registered to practice in another healthcare profession that is subject to statutory regulation. The Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care manages the Accredited Registers Programme which independently assesses organisations who operate voluntary registers for practitioners who are not regulated by law. Sonographers can register with the accredited Register of Clinical Technologists.

The Government keeps the healthcare professions subject to statutory regulation under review and recently ran a consultation seeking views on the criteria used to decide when regulation is necessary, and whether there are any unregulated professions that should be brought into statutory regulation. The Government will publish its response to the consultation in due course.