To ask the Minister of Health to detail any investigations being undertaken following more than 12,000 patient referral letters going missing from the encompass system.

The correspondence in question refers to referral rejection letters issued to the referring GP or clinician following triage, where a decision is taken not to proceed with the referral and the reason for that decision is provided.

The figure of 12,000 referenced publicly reflects early indicative estimates prior to detailed validation. A subsequent regional review has confirmed that 7,032 referrals were affected, where a rejection letter was not generated at the point of triage.

An investigation was initiated following identification of this issue. This confirmed that the automatic generation of referral rejection letters had not been functioning as intended due to a system configuration issue. While triage decisions were recorded correctly within encompass, the associated correspondence was not consistently triggered, and in some cases required manual completion.

The system issue has now been addressed, restoring the automatic generation of referral rejection letters.

Health and Social Care Trusts have undertaken a detailed retrospective review of affected referrals. This included identifying cases where letters were not issued, prioritising higher‑risk referrals, and issuing correspondence to GP practices where appropriate. Any potential patient safety concerns identified through this process have been reviewed and managed locally in line with established incident reporting procedures.

Further work is ongoing to prevent recurrence and strengthen oversight. These include the standardisation of referral workflows, enhanced reporting to identify any rejected referrals without associated communication, updated staff guidance and training, and ongoing monitoring through regional governance arrangements.

There is no evidence of an ongoing systemic failure. The issue was a specific configuration problem which has been corrected, with additional controls in place to ensure referral outcomes are consistently communicated.