Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether specific Hospital Episode Statistics removal codes are planned to be assigned to ventral mesh rectopexy as they are at present for TVT and TOT surgical mesh procedures.

Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) is a database containing details of all admissions, accident and emergency attendances and outpatient appointments at National Health Service hospitals in England. Procedural codes are not dictated by HES.

The OPCS Classification of Interventions and Procedures (OPCS-4) is a Fundamental Information Standard which is used by clinical coders within the NHS.

The OPCS-4 codes are categorised to provide a summary of a consultant episode of patient care for reporting and counting purposes. As such not every procedure has a unique code.

The codes assigned are based on the information documented by the responsible consultant and classification business rules and standards for consistent coding. A combination of OPCS-4 codes may be used for coding ‘ventral mesh rectopexy’ dependent on how and why it was performed.

Any member of the public can submit change requests to request changes to OPCS-4 using the NHS Digital Request Submission Portal. A request has been submitted through an NHS Trust for the addition of ventral mesh rectopexy; the removal of the mesh inserted during ventral rectopexy will also be considered as part of this submission.