Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will review the effectiveness of the assessment process for NHS Continuing Healthcare in ensuring that decisions are based on sufficient clinical evidence; and if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of ensuring that assessments are carried out and validated by a minimum of two independent medical practitioners.

Operational delivery of NHS Continuing Healthcare (CHC) is the responsibility of integrated care boards (ICBs), with oversight from NHS England. NHS England’s assurance regime promotes accurate assessment, equal access, and consistency within CHC delivery.

Eligibility for CHC is determined through a two-stage assessment process. The second stage is carried out by a multidisciplinary team. The legislation for CHC sets out that the multidisciplinary team must include a minimum of two health professionals or one health and one social care professional. The multidisciplinary team should also ideally include someone with specialist knowledge about the individual’s health and social care needs.

As part of the assessment, the multidisciplinary team review evidence such as the individual’s medical records, examinations, and assessments using a standardised decision support tool to help inform the eligibility decision.