Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of the waiting time for treatment for people diagnosed with Long Covid in (a) England, (b) each region and (c) each NHS Trust in each of the last 12 months for which data is available.
NHS England and NHS Improvement publishes monthly activity data and demographic information for patients referred to a post COVID-19 assessment clinic, by region and in England, which is available at the following link:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-post-covid-assessment-service/
The following table shows the number of accepted referrals to post COVID-19 assessment clinics from July 2021 in England and at a regional level. Data at National Health Service trust level is not available.
NHS England region | 5 July – 1 August 2021 | 2 August – 29 August 2021 | 30 August– 26 September 2021 |
England | 5,029 | 4,846 | 5,182 |
East of England | 574 | 580 | 491 |
London | 740 | 797 | 761 |
Midlands | 1,139 | 1,347 | 1,497 |
North East and Yorkshire | 1,012 | 85 | 785 |
North West | 424 | 671 | 552 |
South East | 805 | 426 | 605 |
South West | 335 | 240 | 354 |
From October 2021, NHS England and NHS Improvement have published information on waiting times from referral to an initial assessment. A table showing initial specialist assessments by waiting time for England and at a regional level between 30 August and 26 September 2021 is attached. Data at NHS trust level is not available. Data on waiting times for the period between 2 to 29 August 2021 is available at the following link:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-post-covid-assessment-service/
These are new clinics and as a result there will be variation in the maturity of services. NHS England and NHS Improvement are working closely with clinics to support them to reduce waiting times. As this is a relatively new data collection, some variation may be attributable to incomplete data submissions and NHS England and NHS Improvement are working to improve data quality.