Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to help (a) increase awareness of and (b) shorten diagnosis times for Postural Tachycardia Syndrome.

To improve awareness of postural tachycardia syndrome (PoTS) amongst healthcare professionals, and specifically general practitioners (GPs), the Royal College of General Practitioners provides training on PoTS as part of its Syncope toolkit, which is available at the following link:

https://elearning.rcgp.org.uk/course/view.php?id=500

The Syncope toolkit includes an e-learning module, a podcast, and a webinar, and provides GPs with information about the diagnosis and management of PoTS. The webinar gives GPs the opportunity to hear the lived experience perspective of a patient representative from PoTS UK.

The National Institute for Care Excellence has also published a clinical knowledge summary on the clinical management of blackouts and syncope, that provides advice for clinicians in the United Kingdom on best practice in the assessment and diagnosis of PoTS. This was last updated in November 2023, and is available at the following link:

https://cks.nice.org.uk/topics/blackouts-syncope/diagnosis/assessment/

We are investing in additional capacity to deliver appointments to help bring waiting times down. The Elective Reform Plan, published in January 2025, sets out the specific productivity and reform efforts needed to return to the constitutional standard, that 92% of patients to wait no longer than 18 weeks from Referral to Treatment, by March 2029.

We surpassed our pledge to deliver an extra two million elective appointments, having now delivered 5.2 million additional appointments in our first year of Government. Waiting lists are coming down, as they have fallen by over 206,000 since July 2024.