PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Lung Diseases: Screening (24 January 2022)

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what discussions his Department has had with NHS England on the potential merits of reintroducing the use of spirometry in primary care settings.

Asked by:
Feryal Clark (Labour)

Guidance by the Primary Care Respiratory Society, the British Thoracic Society and the Association of Respiratory Technology and Physiology was published in April 2021, to support the safe re-start of spirometry in primary care.

The ‘Delivery plan for tackling the COVID-19 backlog of elective care’ was published by NHS England and NHS Improvement in February 2022. The plan aims to improve the detection and management of long-term conditions by increasing diagnostics such as spirometry. Additional diagnostic capacity has been created through the approval of 71 community diagnostic centres in 2021/22. The centres are estimated to provide capacity for 408,000 tests in 2021/22 and 750,000 additional tests annually.

Answered by:
Maria Caulfield (Conservative)
7 March 2022