Endometriosis: Health Services
(asked on 12th May 2023) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department taking to reduce waiting times for (a) GP and (b) hospital appointment waiting times for women with endometriosis.
Answered by
Maria Caulfield
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
Patients with symptoms of endometriosis will be prioritised based on clinical need. The National Health Service led Provider Collaborative has identified endometriosis as a priority area and recently established a group to develop further initiatives to reduce waiting times for endometriosis patients.
The Government published its Delivery Plan for Recovering Access to Primary Care on 9 May. This aims to reduce the number of people struggling to contact their general practice, and make sure that arrangements are made for patients’ care the first time they contact their General Practitioner (GP). It will achieve this by moving towards a new Modern General Practice Access model, building capacity to deliver more appointments, and cutting bureaucracy for GPs. This will help ensure that patients who need an appointment with their GP practice, including women with endometriosis, can get one within two weeks.
To support elective recovery, including for hospital appointments and gynaecology and endometriosis related surgery, the Government plans to spend more than £8 billion from 2022/23 to 2024/25. This funding is in addition to the £2 billion Elective Recovery Fund and £700 million Targeted Investment Fund already made available to systems last year to help drive up and protect elective activity. As part of the Autumn Statement 2022, the Government is investing an additional £3.3 billion for 2023/24 and 2024/25 to support the NHS in England, enabling rapid action to improve emergency, elective and primary care performance towards pre-pandemic levels.
Taken together, this funding could deliver the equivalent of nine million more checks, scans and procedures and will mean the NHS in England can aim to deliver around 30% more elective activity by 2024/25 than it was before the pandemic.