Asked by: Helen Grant (Conservative - Maidstone and The Weald)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to reduce ambulance response times.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Our Delivery plan for recovering urgent and emergency care services sets out the range of measures being taken to achieve our ambition of reducing average Category 2 ambulance response times to 30 minutes, across 2024/25. Further information on the delivery plan is available at the following link:
Ambulance trusts received £200 million of additional funding in 2023/24 to increase deployed hours and reduce response times. We will maintain the improved ambulance service capacity from this additional funding in 2024/25, alongside the additional 5,000 permanent hospital beds delivered last year to improve patient flow through accident and emergency, and reduce ambulance capacity lost due to handover delays.
There have been significant improvements in performance across the country, with average Category 2 ambulance response times in 2023/24 over 13 minutes faster compared to the previous year, a reduction of over 27%.
Asked by: Helen Grant (Conservative - Maidstone and The Weald)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what progress her Department has made on increasing access to dentists in Maidstone and the Weald constituency.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
In the 24 months to June 2023, 496,306 adults were seen by a National Health Service dentist in Kent and Medway Integrated Care Board (ICB). This figure is 12% higher than the year before, where 444,190 adults were seen by an NHS dentist, in the 24 months to June 2022.
On 7 February 2024, we published Faster, simpler, and fairer: our plan to recover and reform NHS dentistry, which is backed by £200 million and will fund approximately 2.5 million additional appointments. The plan sets out our actions to improve dental access for patients across the country to address the challenges facing NHS dentistry, including in Maidstone and the Weald.
A new patient premium is supporting dentists in taking on new patients, and a new marketing campaign will help everyone who needs an NHS dentist in finding one. We have further supported dentists by raising the minimum Units of Dental Activity rate to £28 this year, making NHS work more attractive and sustainable.
From 1 April 2023, the responsibility for commissioning primary care dentistry to meet the needs of the local population has been delegated to all ICBs across England. Kent and Medway ICB is responsible for having local processes in place to identify areas of need, and determine the priorities for investment across the ICB area.
Asked by: Helen Grant (Conservative - Maidstone and The Weald)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent progress she has made on retaining more GPs.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
There were 2,799 more full time equivalent (FTE) doctors working in general practice (GP) in December 2023, compared to December 2019. The Government is working with NHS England to increase the GP workforce in England. This includes measures to boost recruitment, address the reasons why doctors leave the profession, and encourage them to return to practice. NHS England has made available a number of retention schemes, to boost the GP workforce.
Asked by: Helen Grant (Conservative - Maidstone and The Weald)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether she plans to have discussions with the General Dental Council on (a) reforms to the overseas registration exam and (b) steps the Council can take to (i) make use of the new powers granted to it by the Government and (ii) increase capacity of the dentistry workforce.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department meets regularly with the General Dental Council (GDC) to discuss registration processes for dentists with overseas qualifications. We welcome the GDC’s recent announcements that it is increasing the number of places available to sit the Overseas Registration Exam (ORE). The GDC has tripled the number of places on sittings of ORE Part 1 for all sittings from August 2023 to the end of 2024. The GDC has also added an additional sitting of ORE Part 2 in 2024, bringing the total number of sittings up to four.
Earlier this year, the GDC carried out a public consultation on its proposals for international registration routes for dentists which include further increasing the capacity of the ORE while developing broader policy on international registration. The consultation also called for evidence to inform longer term plans for the assessment of international qualifications and registration, including the potential future structure of the ORE, and alternative routes to recognition that may enable overseas-qualified dentists to join the GDC’s register more quickly. The GDC will be publishing the outcome of its consultation shortly.
The Department will continue to work with the GDC to ensure overseas registration processes are optimised.
Asked by: Helen Grant (Conservative - Maidstone and The Weald)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans his Department has to improve patient access to GP appointments.
Answered by Neil O'Brien
We recognise that despite the hard work of general practice (GP) teams, some patients are still struggling to access care in a timely way. That is why we have published our Delivery Plan for Recovering Access to Primary Care. The plan has two central ambitions: to tackle the 8am rush and reduce the number of people struggling to contact their practice, and for patients to know on the day they contact their practice how their request will be managed.
We will achieve this by rolling out new digital tools and telephone systems which can help practices to better match their capacity to patient demand, backed by £240 million in retargeted funding. The plan also includes further measures to empower patients to do more themselves, cut bureaucracy for GPs and build capacity to deliver more appointments; and we are investing at least £1.5 billion to create an additional 50 million general practice appointments by 2024 by increasing and diversifying the workforce.
Asked by: Helen Grant (Conservative - Maidstone and The Weald)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he plans to take with Cabinet colleagues to help support people with obsessive compulsive disorder in (a) the workplace and (b) other public settings.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
We are continuing to work across Government to address the social, economic and environmental causes of mental ill health. We are currently working with stakeholders to develop a tool which will potentially better support policymakers across Whitehall to examine the impact of their proposals on mental health, including obsessive compulsive disorder.