Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent steps his Department has taken to help tackle the backlog in diagnostic testing.
The ‘Delivery plan for tackling the COVID-19 backlog of elective care’ sets out how the National Health Service will recover and expand elective services over the next three years, including in diagnostics. We are investing £2.3 billion to increase the volume of diagnostic activity and reduce patient waiting times and establishing up to 160 community diagnostic centres (CDCs) over the next three years. As of October 2022, CDCs have provided over two million additional checks and scans.