Dr. Anita Thomas, the chair of the venous thromboembolism (VTE) Implementation Working Group (IWG) has had discussions with four strategic health authorities since July 2008. We are currently looking at the options that are available for assessing the uptake of the Departments policy of a risk assessment on admission for all patients, and we also keep under review the necessary support for the Exemplar Centres as mentioned in the VTE Expert Working Group's report and the VTE strategy as a whole. A copy of the report has been placed in the Library.The IWG is working closely with Professor Jarman at Imperial College on VTE metrics and how these can be improved so that data collection is as effective and accurate as possible. The cost of VTE to the national health service was estimated at £640 million per year based on 2004 data. We do not have more recent data at present.The annual health check reflects performance against the Government's priorities as set out in vital signs tier 1 and tier2. Vital signs can be found in Operational Plans 2008-09 to 2010-11. A copy of this document has been placed in the Library.