Sir Nicholas Soames: To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what mechanisms are in place to disseminate best practice relating to the provision of accident and emergency care.

Mr Philip Dunne, Minister of State for Health: The Accident and Emergency (A&E) Improvement Plan was launched by NHS England and NHS Improvement in July 2016. It sets out five key initiatives that systems should be adopting across their local Urgent and Emergency Care pathways to improve national performance against the A&E waiting time standard that 95% of patients wait for less than four hours before they are admitted, discharged or transferred to another hospital, by the end of March 2017. As part of the plan, systems are segmented on the basis of performance with targeted support provided by the Emergency Care Improvement Programme and regional NHS England and NHS Improvement teams to unblock barriers, embed best practice and share lessons learnt with the rest of the National Health Service.

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