Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of NHS surgery waiting time information published on the NHS My Care Portal in the context of reports that these timeframes differ from those provided by NHS hospital trusts.

Patients in England can choose the hospital for their first outpatient appointments via the NHS e-Referral Service and the NHS App, allowing them to view and choose from available appointments across different hospitals within the same region.

The National Health Service is a large, decentralized system, and individual NHS hospital trusts are responsible for managing their own patient portals, resulting in different systems and features. Each trust may set its own policies and internal delays before results are displayed in the portal, rather than linking them directly to the patient. A delay in displaying results is a common practice for sensitive test results linked to conditions such as cancer, to give doctors an opportunity to review them with the patient first.

The NHS ensures adequate data for My Planned Care by employing a multi-faceted approach, including centralised data collection and curation, implementing shared records for better data integration across systems, establishing robust data quality checks and reporting, adhering to strict information governance and security standards, and actively working to link diverse data sources. These processes support the provision of timely and accurate information on the My Planned Care website to help patients and healthcare professionals.

The NHS continues to invest heavily in the NHS App and in the past two years we have been implementing digital integration between acute hospitals and the NHS App, meaning that patients can now view their clinical pathway and appointments via the NHS App. We continue to work with hospital trusts to maximise the opportunities available to update patients via the NHS App, which is a key part of the 10-year plan to reform the NHS.

The NHS App has now been adopted by 88% of acute trusts, up nearly 20% since July 2024, which enables patients to view and manage their hospital appointments.

Analysis shows that hospitals that make the changes to plug their systems and processes into the NHS App key app features have improved elective care waiting times.