Asked by: Lord Swire (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have to build on the proposals in the report of Sir Andrew Dilnot’s Commission on Funding of Care and Support, Fairer Care Funding, published in July 2011.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
As announced in the Autumn Statement 2022, we listened to the concerns of local government and made the decision to delay the rollout of charging reforms from October 2023 to October 2025. These reforms include the introduction of a cap on personal care costs, and a more generous adult social care means test. The Government has been considering what form the rollout of charging reform from October 2025 will take.
Asked by: Lord Swire (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what was the cost to the NHS of missed appointments at (1) hospitals, and (2) GP surgeries, in each of the past five years.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
It is not possible to produce an estimate of the true cost to the National Health Service of these missed appointments, as this will depend on whether NHS staff were still able to use the time productively, for example by seeing other patients instead, or doing other work. NHS England advises local NHS organisations, general practices and trusts to plan for preventing and dealing with missed appointments. These include ensuring patients can cancel appointments in convenient ways, such as by text message or through online cancellation forms and offering telephone consultations if these better suit the patients’ requirements.
Asked by: Lord Swire (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many missed dental appointments there have been in each of the past five years.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Whilst the Department does not hold this information in the format requested, data is recorded on dental activity that has occurred. For example, the Department holds data on the number of Units of Dental Activity commissioned and delivered each month on the NHS Business Services Authority Open Data Portal in an online-only format. The portal currently holds data from April 2016 to November 2023.
Asked by: Lord Swire (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what discussions they have had with local authorities about the financing of those in social care.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Ministers and officials in the Department have regular conversations with representatives of local government, including the Local Government Association and the Association for Directors of Adult Social Services, regarding the costs of meeting the needs of adults who draw on care and support. The Department regularly engages with local authorities, who are responsible for assessing eligibility for financial assistance as set out in the Care Act, to understand the impact charging policy has on individuals who draw on care. The Department also regularly engages with individual local authorities to better understand their financial plans for commissioning and delivering adult social care.
Asked by: Lord Swire (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what progress they have made on integrating social care and the NHS.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Health and Care Act 2022 established integrated care systems, reforming how health and adult social care work together by putting partnership at the heart of planning. The Government has published guidance for integrated care partnerships (ICPs), on the statutory requirement for each ICP to publish an Integrated Care Strategy to address the health, social care, and public health needs of their system. All ICPs have now published their integrated care strategies.
The integration of health and social care is often best achieved through collaboration across smaller geographies within integrated care systems called places. Since the Health and Care Act 2022, we have seen good progress in the development of place-based arrangements to integrate health and social care. In October 2023, we published our Shared Outcomes Toolkit designed to help place-based partnerships develop shared outcomes as a powerful means of promoting integrated working and joined up care. We also issued a call for evidence as part of our review of Section 75 of the NHS Act 2006, which permits local authorities and National Health Service bodies to pool budgets, enabling joint commissioning and the commissioning of integrated services. The findings of this review will be shared in due course.
Asked by: Lord Swire (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government which NHS trusts in England have reported patients suffering from addiction to Captagon.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The information requested is not held centrally.
Asked by: Lord Swire (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what his Department's policy is on the establishment of health and wellbeing hubs in former community hospitals.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
Community health services play a crucial role in preventing admissions, supporting safe transfers of care and reducing pressure on general practitioners. We know that patients prefer to be treated closer to home when they can be; and doing so prevents hospital admissions. Health and wellbeing hubs provide services which focus on areas such as health promotion and offer support within a person’s local community to meet their wider health and care needs. They are one of the models that we are using to keep people well and as close to home as possible.
As population needs vary across the country and are influenced by a variety of demographic factors, transformation and service redesign is rightly being led by local areas. It is for clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) to decide on how to use their assets (including their estates) and structure the provision of health and care services in a way that is most appropriate for their local community. For some areas this will mean the introduction of health and wellbeing hubs, as seen in East Devon, whilst the structure may look slightly different in others. The underlying principle is that CCGs have the flexibility and independence to make that decision, and this is the approach the Department takes.
Asked by: Lord Swire (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to encourage NHS England to develop specialist services for Lyme disease patients.
Answered by Steve Brine
Lyme disease is a bacterial infection and most people recover completely with prompt antibiotic treatment that reduces the risk of further symptoms developing and increases the chance of complete recovery. NHS England specialised services are not the responsible commissioner for treatment of Lyme disease: Lyme disease is diagnosed and treated in primary care or in clinical commissioning groups’ infectious diseases hospital services according to the Prescribed Services Manual.
The Department has funded four independent systematic reviews, published at the end of 2017, to further strengthen the evidence base for epidemiology, diagnosis, treatment and prevention of Lyme disease. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence has recently published its clinical guideline on Lyme disease, which provides the latest information for clinicians in diagnosing and managing Lyme disease. The guideline aims to raise awareness of when Lyme disease should be considered and to ensure that people have prompt and consistent diagnosis and treatment.
Asked by: Lord Swire (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to fund research into improving the diagnostics for Lyme disease.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
The diagnostic tests used in the United Kingdom meet international best practice, and accord with the forthcoming National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidance on best practice for the diagnosis of Lyme disease.
The Department funds health and care research through the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) and is funding research into Lyme disease diagnostics through the NIHR Health Protection Research Units.
Asked by: Lord Swire (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many GP fit note episodes there were for mental and behavioural disorders in the Northern, Eastern and Western Devon Clinical Commissioning Group in the last two years.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
NHS Digital has begun publishing anonymised fit note data available at clinical commissioning group level. The data provides information on the volumes of fit notes issued, the split between unfit and maybe fit for work, duration, linked episodes of illness, gender and condition. No individual patients or general practitioner practices can be identified and data will be published every quarter.
We are committed to supporting the fit note’s intended purpose as an enabler for conversations about health and work, focussing individuals and their employers to think about what they can do rather than what they cannot.
The number of fit note episodes for mental and behavioural disorders in Northern, Eastern Western Devon over the last two years was 2,343 in 2015-16 and 3,122 in 2016-17.
The data is published by NHS Digital at:
http://digital.nhs.uk/catalogue/PUB30068