The NHS Long Term Plan focuses on the importance of preventing avoidable illness and more active management of the health of the population. Smoking cessation is specifically identified as a key service that can improve the prevention of avoidable illness.

This service is a branch of the wider aim of supporting hospital patients to continue their stop smoking efforts after discharge, which is expected to increase one-year quit rates by 11% and, when implemented, is expected to save the NHS £85 million in healthcare resource use within one year (Mullen, 2010; Royal College of Physicians, 2018).