EARLIEST CLINICALLY APPROPRIATE DATE is the earliest date that it was clinically appropriate for an ACTIVITY to take place.

For the Radiotherapy Data Set, EARLIEST CLINICALLY APPROPRIATE DATE is the first date that the PATIENT would have been clinically fit to start Radiotherapy.

For the Community Services Data Set, Mental Health Services Data Set and Commissioning Data Sets (version 6-2 onwards), the EARLIEST CLINICALLY APPROPRIATE DATE may be used locally to inform waiting time calculations. It can be used to account for periods of time where it is not appropriate to treat the PATIENT for clinical reasons, for example:

• where the PATIENT has been admitted to hospital for an unrelated condition and the SERVICE cannot commence planned treatment until the PATIENT has been discharged
• where the PATIENT is frail and cannot be treated until their condition improves, but it is not appropriate to discharge the PATIENT from the SERVICE.

This data element is also known by these names:

Context	Alias
plural	EARLIEST CLINICALLY APPROPRIATE DATES