Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much funding he has allocated from the public purse to support avoidance of misdiagnosis of (a) brain and (b) spinal injuries.
This information is not collected, and no assessment of trends or estimates of misdiagnosis incidence has been made. Furthermore, the funding of the vast majority of NHS services is a local matter, with services commissioned by clinical commissioning groups according from individual resource allocations according to local need.
To support clinicians in the assessment and diagnosis of head injuries, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has produced the evidence-based guideline, ‘Head injury: assessment and early management’. Updated in 2019, the guideline sets out best practice in the diagnosis and treatment of people with head injuries, including the use of appropriate diagnostic tools. In 2017 NICE also published a guideline on assessment and early management of spinal injuries, which references sections of the head injury guideline to support consistent diagnostic and assessment approaches. Both sets of guidance can be found at the following links:
https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cg176
https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng41