Long Covid: Health Services

(asked on 12th November 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many patients with Long Covid have waited longer than 18 weeks for referral to the Post Covid Assessment Service in (a) England, (b) each region of England and (c) each NHS Trust.


Answered by
Maria Caulfield Portrait
Maria Caulfield
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
This question was answered on 19th November 2021

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.

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