Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to maintain the level of out-of-hours GP cover in Surrey.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Evening and weekend general practice appointments are routinely available across the country to enable patients to find appointments at a time convenient to them, with millions of patients having already benefitted from this.
Care UK is the provider for both the Out of Hours (OOH) and the 111 service for Surrey. Since April 2019 NHS North West Surrey Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) has been the lead commissioner for OOH general practitioner (GP) services for North West Surrey, Surrey Downs, Guildford and Waverley and East Surrey CCGs.
There are eight Primary Care Centres in Surrey that are involved in the provision of OOH services.
The Woking Out of Hours primary care centre provides OOH services on Monday-Friday 19:00-23:59 and 08:00-23:59 at weekends and bank/public holidays. This service has not changed since the new contract began at the end of March 2019. There are no plans to change the current contracted hours of opening or operation for Woking.
North West Surrey CCG has advised that the following steps have been put in place to maintain the level of OOH GP cover in Surrey:
- Direct booking being made available for extended access hubs through 111;
- Ongoing recruitment/pro-active skill mix, including GPs, advanced nurse practitioners, urgent care practitioners, and dental and mental health nurses;
- The NHS Community Pharmacist Consultation Service, allowing patients to be referred to pharmacists for minor ailments;
- Pharmacists able to issue prescriptions and repeat prescriptions out of hours;
- Collaborative working with the GP federation and primary care networks; and
- Looking at activity versus productivity going into winter and whether extra resources will be needed.
NHS England is undertaking a national review of access to general practice services, to improve patient access and reduce unwarranted variation in experience. The NHS Long Term Plan made a clear commitment to the future of general practice, with primary and community care set to receive at least £4.5 billion more a year by 2023/24 in real terms. This was followed by the five-year GP contract framework, which will provide greater financial security and certainty for practices to plan ahead.
Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to reduce waiting times for cervical screening test results.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Government recognises that it is important that women are informed about their cervical screening results as soon as possible and that they are aware when they receive their results that they are independent of any onward referral for further investigative tests if needed.
The NHS Cervical Screening Programme is introducing testing for human papillomavirus (HPV) as the primary test carried out on cervical screening samples and this is due to be implemented across England by 2020. As a result of the move to HPV primary screening, cervical screening providers have experienced difficulties in meeting the 14-day TAT target. This is due to the HPV primary screening requiring less cytologists to carry out testing and staff anticipating this reduction before the full roll-out has been implemented and reduced workload seen.
A number of initiatives have been introduced across the country to reduce waiting times for cervical screening test results. These include: laboratories offering overtime for staff; utilising existing HPV pilot sites to create additional cytology capacity for other laboratories; and allowing the conversion of existing service providers to HPV primary screening ahead of full roll-out nationally.
In addition to this, Professor Richards’ review of national adult screening programmes recommended that NHS England should ensure that all screening results are given to patients in the standard timeframes. Professor Richards also acknowledged that the difficulties experienced in cervical screening has been due to the change in testing and should revert once the transition has been completed given close monitoring.
Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to improve detection rates of (a) hepatitis B and (b) hepatitis C.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Public Health England’s (PHE’s) multi-agency National Strategic Group on Viral Hepatitis is committed to working towards the World Health Organization goal to eliminate viral hepatitis as a major public health threat by 2030.
NHS England routinely screen pregnant women for hepatitis B and have also implemented opt-out blood-borne virus testing across prisons. This can be viewed at the following links:
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence published guidance on increasing testing available treatment for hepatitis B and C at the following link:
https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ph43
PHE has published evidence reviews, co-produced educational modules, developed health promotional materials on hepatitis B and C infection and launched a hepatitis C patient re-engagement exercise at the following links:
https://elearning.rcgp.org.uk/course/info.php?popup=0&id=175
https://publichealthengland-immunisati.app.box.com/s/iptxtlziu57evyejw8zgvhimh0pjwa05
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/hepatitis-c-patient-re-engagement-exercise
In 2019, NHS England made additional resources available to increase hepatitis C case finding and treatment which include: peer to peer support programmes and an incentivised payment model to engage and encourage testing people in high risks groups, and intensive test and treat programmes in prisons settings.
Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what progress his Department has made on recruiting additional GPs in rural locations.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The NHS Long Term Plan, published in January 2019, made a clear commitment to the future of general practice, with primary and community care set to receive at least £4.5 billion more a year by 2023/24, in real terms. This was followed by the five-year general practitioner (GP) contract, which will provide greater financial security and certainty for practices to plan ahead and will see billions of extra investment for improved access, expanded services at local practices, the development of Primary Care Networks (PCNs) and longer appointments for patients who need them.
NHS England and Health Education England are working together with the profession to increase the GP workforce in England. This includes measures to boost recruitment, address the reasons why GPs are leaving the profession and encourage GPs to return to practice. The forthcoming People Plan will set out a broader strategy for a sustainable general practice workforce and how we will meet the commitment to the additional doctors working in general practice through both recruitment and retention programmes. Alongside our commitment to grow the GP workforce, the GP contract will see funding towards up to 20,000 extra staff working in PCNs by 2023/24.
In 2018, a record 3,473 doctors accepted a place on GP specialty training. Additionally, NHS England’s International GP Recruitment programme is bringing suitably qualified doctors from overseas to work in English general practice.
Additional incentives are available to attract GP trainees into previously hard-to-recruit areas, including rural communities. The Targeted Enhanced Recruitment Scheme, a £20,000 one off payment, is attracting GP trainees to parts of the country where there have been consistent shortages of GP trainees. Over 500 trainees entered TERs in 2016-18 and a further 276 places are available this year.
We have a broad offer to support GPs to remain in the National Health Service including the GP Retention Scheme, the GP Retention Fund, the GP Health Service and the Releasing Time for Care Programme.
It is encouraging to see as of June 2019, over 250 more doctors, and over 800 more nurses and other staff with direct patient care responsibilities working in general practice compared to June 2018.
Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many doctors there were in hospitals in Surrey in the latest period for which figures are available.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
NHS Digital publishes Hospital and Community Health Services workforce statistics for England. These include staff working in hospital trusts and clinical commissioning groups (CCGs), but not staff working in primary care, local authorities or other providers.
Data is held by organisation not place of work. Individuals may work on more than one site within a trust.
As at June 2019, the latest available data, there were over 1,200 full time equivalent doctors at Surrey and Borders Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, Royal Surrey County Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust, full time equivalent.
Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what progress his Department has made on recruiting additional GPs in rural locations.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
It has not proved possible to respond to the hon. Member in the time available before Prorogation.
Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to maintain the level of out-of-hours GP cover in Surrey.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
It has not proved possible to respond to the hon. Member in the time available before Prorogation.
Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to reduce waiting times for cervical screening test results.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
It has not proved possible to respond to the hon. Member in the time available before Prorogation.
Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to improve the detection of hepatitis B and C.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
It has not proved possible to respond to the hon. Member in the time available before Prorogation.
Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the mortality rate was for people under 75 years of age with cancer in each of the last three years.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The directly age-standardised cancer mortality rates per 100,000 population in England under 75 years of age for each of the three most recently published years are shown in the following table:
Year | Mortality rate |
2015 | 136.4 |
2016 | 135.6 |
2017 | 131.8 |