Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of in which type of healthcare there is greatest geographical disparity of treatment (a) availability, (b) choice and (c) outcomes across England.

No such assessment has been made. However, the Right Care programme actively uses variation between clinical commissioning groups to help identify those diseases or conditions that have the potential for greatest improvement. Indicators used include prevalence, treatment and outcomes.

The NHS Atlas of Variation, Commissioning for Value Packs and indicators in the National Health Service Outcomes Framework and Public Health Outcomes Framework provide publicly accessible resources to compare geographical areas and highlight health inequalities and other variation across a wide variety of indicators.