Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the letter from the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department of Health and Social Care to the Chair of the Health and Social Care on NHS Federated Data Platform (FDP) dated 30 August 2023, what the benefits are for each trust participating in the FDP pilot programme.

The Federated Data Platform will improve outcomes by bringing together the information needed to plan and deliver care and reduce administrative burden on staff. Pilot sites have seen the removal of patients from waiting lists and waiting times fall, meaning patients are treated faster; discharge delays have been reduced, enabling patients to leave hospital and get home sooner; and people have waited for less time to receive a diagnosis. Following are examples of benefits that have been reported within the Improving Elective Care Co-ordination for Patients (IECCP) and Optimised Patient Tracking and Intelligent Choices Application (OPTICA) pilots.

For IECCP, across trusts realising benefits, a total of 55,521 patients have been requested for removal from waitlists. There has also been a 5.7% increase in theatre utilisation per month on average compared to the six-month period before the pilot.

For OPTICA, following the implementation of the pilot in one trust, the trust realised a number of benefits including a 36% decrease in the average number of days patients are delayed from being discharged, for patients with a length of stay of 21 or more days, and a 22% reduction in average length of stay of pathway 0 patients, who do not need health support on discharge, freeing up capacity for the trust to care for patients with more complex needs.