Asked by: Bim Afolami (Conservative - Hitchin and Harpenden)
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 ensure that rural communities' access to a local GP surgery is maintained.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
Capitation payments to practices include a formula weighting for rurality. The Targeted Enhanced Recruitment Scheme offers a £20,000 salary supplement to attract general practitioner trainees to work in areas of the country where training places have been unfilled for a number of years, such as rural locations. Additionally, NHS England and NHS Improvement have allowed commissioners to waive the Primary Care Network (PCN) minimum population where a PCN serves a community with a low population density across a large rural and remote area.
Asked by: Bim Afolami (Conservative - Hitchin and Harpenden)
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 tackle waiting lists for mental health services in Hertfordshire.
Answered by Gillian Keegan - Secretary of State for Education
To improve mental health waiting lists in the Hertfordshire area, 14 organisations have formed the Hertfordshire Mental Health, Learning Disabilities and Autism Collaborative. The Collaborative aims to develop joint working between these organisations to improve outcomes for local people. It will address local mental health demand in Hertfordshire and manage waiting times to ensure people receive the treatment they need as soon as possible.
We have provided an additional £2.3 billion a year by 2023/24 to expanding the provision of mental health services in England. This will allow an additional two million people to access timely mental health care. We have also invested a further £500 million in 2021/22.
Asked by: Bim Afolami (Conservative - Hitchin and Harpenden)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will take steps to ensure that all hospitals allow expectant mothers to be accompanied when (a) attending antenatal appointments and (b) they are in labour.
Answered by Nadine Dorries
NHS England and NHS Improvement refreshed guidance on visiting restrictions for maternity services on 15 April 2021, asking all National Health Service providers to urgently complete any further action needed to ensure partners can accompany women to antenatal appointments. All maternity units should be allowing partners and support people to attend all scans and appointments.
All maternity units are allowing at least one birth partner who has no symptoms of coronavirus present with them during any type of labour and birth except some urgent emergency births or where a general anaesthetic is used.
Asked by: Bim Afolami (Conservative - Hitchin and Harpenden)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps the Government is taking to improve young people’s mental health as part of the recovery from the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Nadine Dorries
We are providing an additional £79 million in 2021/22 for children and young people’s mental health services to allow around 22,500 more children and young people to access community health services, 2,000 more to access eating disorder services, and a faster increase in the coverage of mental health support teams in schools and colleges.
We are also providing £13 million to ensure young people aged 18 to 25 years old are supported with tailored mental health support, helping bridge the gap between children’s and adult services.
These investments are in addition to the commitments of the NHS Long Term Plan, through which mental health services will receive an extra £2.3 billion a year by 2023/24, allowing 345,000 more children and young people access to National Health Service-funded mental health services.
Asked by: Bim Afolami (Conservative - Hitchin and Harpenden)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether the Government plans to continue Public Health England's abdominal cancer symptoms awareness campaign that included the ovarian cancer symptom of bloating.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Evaluation of the latest national campaign on abdominal cancer symptoms which ran between November 2020 and January 2021 is currently underway.
Asked by: Bim Afolami (Conservative - Hitchin and Harpenden)
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 reduce waiting times for NHS under-18s gender dysphoria clinics.
Answered by Steve Barclay - Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
NHS England has publicly acknowledged that the waiting time for under-18s accessing gender identity services is unacceptably long. NHS England increased funding for this service by around £2 million per year from 2016/17 but waiting times have continued to increase due mainly to an unprecedented increase in demand for these services in recent years, to an extent that there is not sufficient capacity in the current service.
In 2018, NHS England established a Programme Board for Gender Identity Services. Its terms of reference state that the Board’s main objective is to make recommendations for the future delivery and configuration of specialised services for adults, young people and children, with a view to achieving the optimal models of care that are characterised by timely and equitable access to the range of available interventions; consistent delivery models and excellent care and excellent patient experience.
The role of the Board is to coordinate ‘demand and capacity’ planning that will inform the future delivery of specialised services and resource allocation for adult services and young people’s services; and that will inform an approach to commissioning that seeks to ensure the sustainability of the national service.
NHS England is currently working with the providers of the services, and other significant stakeholders, to develop proposals for the future commissioning and delivery of these services from 2019/20.
Asked by: Bim Afolami (Conservative - Hitchin and Harpenden)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps the Government is taking to implement the recommendations of the independent review of community pharmacy clinical services commissioned by the NHS.
Answered by Steve Brine
The implementation of the National Health Service Five Year Forward View has taken into account the findings of the Murray Review. NHS England has seen progress in a number of areas to implement the recommendations. For example the Pharmacy Integration Fund has supported a pilot in the North East of referral from NHS 111 to community pharmacies for minor illness and the national ‘stay well campaign’ continues to highlight the role of community pharmacy in this area. We are aware of locally commissioned schemes addressing hypertension. The Pharmacy Integration Fund is also supporting the roll out of clinical pharmacists in general practice and in care homes with additional training to award independent prescriber status.
Asked by: Bim Afolami (Conservative - Hitchin and Harpenden)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department has taken to roll-out a minor ailments scheme through community pharmacies as recommended by the independent review of community pharmacy clinical services.
Answered by Steve Brine
Minor ailment services are currently commissioned locally by the National Health Service according to need. However a national minor illness scheme is in development, building on a pilot digital minor illness referral service (DMIRS) that commenced last year in the North East. This scheme provides direct referrals from NHS 111 to community pharmacy. Three further DMIRS pilots, supported by the Pharmacy Integration Fund, are due to be launched by early autumn 2018, in Devon, London (in a phased approach), and East Midlands. The areas will be adopting the same model used in the North East with some minor adaptations dependent on the local NHS 111 case mix. An evaluation will inform any next steps for the project.
Asked by: Bim Afolami (Conservative - Hitchin and Harpenden)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the merits of community pharmacist supplementary and independent prescribing clinics in Scotland for England.
Answered by Steve Brine
The Scottish Government will shortly be conducting a review of community pharmacy supplementary and independent prescribing clinics. The Department will consider carefully the findings of this review.
In England, the Pharmacy Integration Fund is being used to support the employment of pharmacists, who are able to prescribe and access the full clinical record within integrated urgent care, general practice and care homes. These pharmacists are well placed to work alongside the wider medical team to optimise the use of medicines and improve clinical effectiveness.
Asked by: Bim Afolami (Conservative - Hitchin and Harpenden)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the merits of proposals to permit community pharmacists to identify and manage uncomplicated cases of hypertension as part of the forthcoming community pharmacy funding negotiations.
Answered by Steve Brine
Ministers recognise the value and skillset of community pharmacists and their teams with several programmes of work, supported by the Pharmacy Integration Fund, already investigating how we can better utilize their knowledge and expertise in a wide range of primary care settings. The Department is unable to comment on the specifics of the forthcoming negotiations. However any suggested amendments to services delivered under the Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework, brought forward by the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee, will be discussed and considered carefully.