Baroness Grey-Thompson – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Baroness Grey-Thompson on 2016-02-02.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what was the cost of operating wheelchair services in England in the last year for which figures are available.

Lord Prior of Brampton

Information on the cost of operating wheelchair services in England is not available centrally. Such information as is available is from reference costs, which are the average unit costs to National Health Service trusts and foundation trusts of providing defined services to patients. The total cost of operating wheelchair services reported in 2014-15 reference costs was £143.4 million.

NHS England advises that as clinical commissioning groups are responsible for commissioning wheelchair services, it does not collect data on how much is spent on the purchase of wheelchairs. NHS England is however supporting improvement in wheelchair services and has just established a new national data collection. This will enable tracking at local and national levels of issues such as the number of wheelchair users, the costs of services and the length of time people have to wait.