Asked by: Karen Lee (Labour - Lincoln)
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 ophthalmology services.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Clinical commissioning groups are responsible for commissioning secondary care ophthalmology services to meet local need. We would expect services to be commissioned in line with National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidance where it is available or best available evidence and for patients to receive treatment, in line with their clinical priority, without any undue delay at any stage of their referral, diagnosis or treatment.
Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) is a national clinical improvement programme, working with frontline clinicians to identify and reduce unwarranted variations in service delivery and clinical practice. NHS England advises the GIRFT report into ophthalmology, which will contain recommendations for service improvement, is due for publication shortly.
Asked by: Karen Lee (Labour - Lincoln)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent estimate he has made of the number of cancer clinical nurse specialist vacancies in the NHS.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
NHS Improvement collects vacancy data for three staff groups; doctors, nurses and ‘other staff’. These vacancy statistics are published for England and at the regional level of North, Midlands and East, London and South.
NHS Digital published the latest NHS Improvement vacancy data which can be found at the following link:
The large majority of vacancies are filled by a combination of bank and agency staff.
Asked by: Karen Lee (Labour - Lincoln)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans he has to tackle cancer workforce shortages in the NHS people plan.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The interim NHS People Plan, published on 3 June 2019, puts the workforce at the heart of the National Health Service and will ensure we have the staff needed to deliver high quality care. A final People Plan will be published soon after the conclusion of the 2019 Spending Review.
The Cancer Workforce Plan for England, published in December 2017 by Health Education England (HEE), set out plans to expand capacity and skills in the cancer workforce, including targeting additional training support for seven priority professions which are key to cancer prevention, diagnosis and treatment, such as clinical radiology, histopathology, oncology and diagnostic and therapeutic radiography. HEE will now work with NHS England and NHS Improvement to understand the longer-term workforce implications of further development of cancer services. This work will inform the final People Plan.