Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 30 November to Question 3424 on Rheumatology: Consultants and Nurses, what (a) methodology and (b) criteria were used to determine the required increase in specialist training places to meet NHS demand for full time equivalent grade 1 paediatric and adult rheumatology consultants.

Over the last 30 years, the National Health Service has developed sophisticated modelling techniques to guide the allocation of resources against patient need. The current resource allocations methodology considers over 150 separate factors to determine population-weighted healthcare need for each NHS integrated care board.

This methodology is combined with NHS England’s, and previously Health Education England’s, demand forecasting model that utilises hospital episode statistics alongside Office for National Statistics population projections to understand future growth in demand for key hospital services in each region and is further adjusted based on regional deprivation.

This provides a robust method for understanding the distribution of future healthcare demand on the medical workforce, including paediatric and adult rheumatology consultants. The model provides a reliable and transparent methodology on which to base the distribution of trainee posts across regions which can be revisited if changes occur.