Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the main causes of delays are between triage and clinical assessment in accident and emergency departments.

We remain committed to improving patient experience and reducing waiting times across all accident and emergency departments.

While NHS England sets expectations that patients attending accident and emergency departments should receive an initial clinical assessment within 15 minutes, this is guidance rather than a target and as such, performance is not routinely monitored centrally for all trusts for all patients.

Triage is a clinical assessment of a person's presenting need and urgency, and it can be part of the initial clinical assessment or completed prior to it, depending on patients' needs. We do not routinely collect data about the reasons for any delays between these two parts of clinical assessment, where they are conducted separately.

NHS England continues to monitor urgent and emergency care performance through a range of indicators, including waiting times, time to treatment, and overall patient flow. Work is ongoing to improve timely assessment and care, including through investment in workforce, streaming models, and front-door clinical triage.