Injuries

(asked on 7th January 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the paper by Julian Guest et al Cohort study evaluating the burden of wounds to the UK’s NHS in 2017/18: update from 2012/13, published in the British Medical Journal on 22 December 2020, what steps they are taking to address the finding that "the annual prevalence of wounds increased by 71 per cent between 2012/2013 and 2017/2018".


Answered by
Lord Bethell Portrait
Lord Bethell
This question was answered on 16th March 2021

The National Wound Care Strategy Programme (NWCSP) was commissioned by NHS England and NHS Improvement and launched in September 2018 to scope the development of a wound care national strategy for England that focuses on improving care relating to pressure ulcers, lower limb ulcers and surgical wounds. It addresses unwarranted variation in United Kingdom wound care services by proposing a move towards clinical pathways that flow across different provider organisations to better meet the needs of patients.

This will improve patient care through quicker diagnosis and access to appropriate treatment, leading to improved healing rates and reduced recurrence rates. Better healing and reduced recurrence will reduce overall prevalence of wounds, patient suffering, expenditure on inappropriate and ineffective treatments and the amount of clinical time spent on wound care. This will reduce the overall annual cost of wound care to the National Health Service. In the last 12 months, the NWCSP has audited the quality of care in secondary care pressure ulcer patients and published lower limb recommendations alongside a case for implementation. The surgical wounds recommendations have been finalised and are being published ahead of the implementation strategy. In 2021 the NWCSP will move into implementation while continuing to develop the resources and evidence to support this work.

Reticulating Splines