Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they have plans to introduce requirements for Clinical Commissioning Groups with patients in acute hospitals in other areas to prioritise those patients to prevent bed-blocking.

NHS England has advised that it does not currently have plans to introduce requirements on clinical commissioning groups to prioritise patients in one area over another.

However, NHS England is working to improve patient flow, for example through the Urgent and Emergency Care Review, which proposes a radical transformation in the way services are provided to deliver a more sustainable urgent and emergency care system, delivering care closer to home whenever it is safe and appropriate to do so.

NHS England has also recently published guidance on Transforming urgent and emergency care services in England to help frontline providers and commissioners deliver safer, faster and better urgent and emergency care to patients of all ages, collaborating in networks that cross traditional boundaries in order to deliver best practice. A copy of the guidance is attached.