Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to reduce the regional variation in (1) quality, and (2) provision, of NHS wheelchair services, identified by Frontier Economics in their report An Economic Assessment of Wheelchair Provision in England, published on 6 May.

NHS England has assessed the report by Frontier Economics and has compared the findings to existing policy and data requirements for wheelchair provision for integrated care boards (ICBs). ICBs are responsible for commissioning and providing wheelchair services for local populations, supported by NHS England. NHS England has established a national wheelchair dataset which reviews waiting times during care pathways to enable targeted action if improvements are required. It has also developed a wheelchair currency model for providers, commissioners and systems to understand complexities in patient populations and support commissioning using the currencies as an evidence base. The model also supports benchmarking across localities and nationally.

NHS England’s service specification for wheelchair services enables ICBs to review and improve local wheelchair services and the introduction of personal wheelchair budgets and legal rights offers a framework to commission personalised and integrated wheelchair services. ICBs are responsible for providing information on local provision of wheelchair services and providers have a responsibility to ensure that users can provide feedback and or raise concerns.