Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to increase capacity in specialist dermatology services.

NHS England and the British Association of Dermatologists have established a specialist dermatology clinical reference group. Its objectives are to: measure and improve quality; improve value and reduce unwarranted variation; improve equity of service; and transform and provide advice and support to integrated care boards as they take on responsibility for specialised service commissioning.

In addition, NHS England’s Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) programme is working to improve capacity and waiting times through its established Further Faster programme. This programme brings together hospital trust clinicians and operational teams with the challenge of collectively going ‘further and faster’ to transform patient pathways, reduce unnecessary follow-up outpatient appointments and improve access and waiting times for patients, including dermatology patients.

A Further Faster handbook for dermatology has been produced, to share best practice and support National Health Service dermatology teams to reduce the number of Did Not Attend appointments, reduce unnecessary follow ups and, where appropriate, reduce the number of outpatient appointments by booking patients straight to tests, helping to free up capacity for patients in need of specialist dermatology services.

The GIRFT team is carrying out regular visits to and meetings with challenged departments to support them in this work.