Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department is taking steps to encourage the use of data management systems across the NHS that can support the accurate coding and optimal management of heart failure patients.

NHS England is working with Health Education England and clinicians to develop a heart failure and heart valve disease course. This includes diagnosing heart failure and issues in echocardiogram reports, the correct use of SNOMED codes and coding for patients to be added to the Quality and Outcomes Framework’s heart failure register to aid monitoring, review and attainment.

NHS England also commissions the National Institute for Cardiovascular Outcomes Research for data tools and user guides to support hospitals, including data completeness and national quality improvement metric tools.