Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what estimate he has made of the number of appointments booked through the NHS Choose and Book service in each of the last 12 months.

On average, every working day around 40,000 outpatient referrals are booked through Choose and Book and patients from over 90% of GP practices are referred using the Choose and Book service every week. Each month this represents around 500,000 referrals being made from GP practices to first consultant-led outpatient services through Choose and Book.

Use of Choose and Book is, however, significantly greater than this with an additional 200,000 or so referrals per month being booked to other outpatient services, which include allied health professionals, GPs with special interests, diagnostic and assessment services. These are not currently included as part of the utilisation figures below as the denominator data is not currently reported at a national level.

The following table shows the percentage of first outpatient referrals and the total number of referrals booked through Choose and Book between July 2013 and June 2014. Booking reports are available on the Choose and Book website:

www.chooseandbook.nhs.uk/staff/bau/reports/?searchterm=reports

Note:

¹Utilisation is calculated as the percentage of referrals made to first consultant-led outpatient services using the Choose and Book system, compared to the total number of referrals made to first outpatient services, as reported by provider organisations to the Department.