Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of private sector referral management schemes.

National Health Service commissioners and providers need to work together to manage demand and plan sufficient capacity to maintain low waiting times. Referral management and assessment services can be a highly effective way of ensuring only those patients who need to go to hospital do so. Commissioners use referral management centres, as well as clinical triage and assessment centres, to ensure patients are treated by the most appropriate clinical professional as quickly as possible. It does not make sense for patients to be referred to hospital directly when they can be more appropriately (and more quickly) treated elsewhere.

Referral management and assessment services should only be in place where they carry clinical support and provide benefits to patients. They must not be devices that delay treatment or lead to waiting times not being properly recorded.

It is for individual clinical commissioning groups to assess the effectiveness of the services provided by referral management schemes in line with the contracts held to provide these services.