Asked by: Nigel Evans (Conservative - Ribble Valley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many rural GP practices were closed by the NHS in 2017.
Answered by Steve Brine
Data is not held centrally on the average cost per year of running a rural general practitioner (GP) practice.
NHS England contracts for the provision of general practice services in England with GP contractors who are responsible for running their practices and meeting the costs of doing so.
The latest ‘NHS Payments to general practice – England’ report published in December 2018, covering the 2017/18 financial year, provides information on National Health Service payments to individual providers of general practice services in England. The report is available from the NHS Digital website at the following link:
In 2017/18, there were 1,193 practices with a ‘rural’ indicator and these received total payments of £1,738,904,818, an average payment of £1,457,590 per rural practice.
NHS England has not conducted an analysis of information held on practice closures to distinguish between urban and rural practice closures.
NHS England and the British Medical Association’s General Practitioners Committee have agreed a five-year GP contract framework from 2019/20 which marks some of the biggest general practice contract changes in over a decade and will be essential to deliver the ambitions set out in the NHS Long Term Plan through strong general practice services. The contract increases investment and more certainty around funding and looks to reduce pressure and stabilise general practice. It will ensure general practice plays a leading role in every Primary Care Network which will include bigger teams of health professionals working together in local communities. It will mean much closer working between networks and their Integrated Care System. This builds on the General Practice Forward View commitments which included dedicated £40 million support programme for struggling practices to help them become more resilient – with over 3,000 packages of support delivered in 2017/18.
Asked by: Nigel Evans (Conservative - Ribble Valley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he has plans to limit the number of rural GP practices that close each year.
Answered by Steve Brine
Data is not held centrally on the average cost per year of running a rural general practitioner (GP) practice.
NHS England contracts for the provision of general practice services in England with GP contractors who are responsible for running their practices and meeting the costs of doing so.
The latest ‘NHS Payments to general practice – England’ report published in December 2018, covering the 2017/18 financial year, provides information on National Health Service payments to individual providers of general practice services in England. The report is available from the NHS Digital website at the following link:
In 2017/18, there were 1,193 practices with a ‘rural’ indicator and these received total payments of £1,738,904,818, an average payment of £1,457,590 per rural practice.
NHS England has not conducted an analysis of information held on practice closures to distinguish between urban and rural practice closures.
NHS England and the British Medical Association’s General Practitioners Committee have agreed a five-year GP contract framework from 2019/20 which marks some of the biggest general practice contract changes in over a decade and will be essential to deliver the ambitions set out in the NHS Long Term Plan through strong general practice services. The contract increases investment and more certainty around funding and looks to reduce pressure and stabilise general practice. It will ensure general practice plays a leading role in every Primary Care Network which will include bigger teams of health professionals working together in local communities. It will mean much closer working between networks and their Integrated Care System. This builds on the General Practice Forward View commitments which included dedicated £40 million support programme for struggling practices to help them become more resilient – with over 3,000 packages of support delivered in 2017/18.
Asked by: Nigel Evans (Conservative - Ribble Valley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the average cost per year of running a rural GP practice is.
Answered by Steve Brine
Data is not held centrally on the average cost per year of running a rural general practitioner (GP) practice.
NHS England contracts for the provision of general practice services in England with GP contractors who are responsible for running their practices and meeting the costs of doing so.
The latest ‘NHS Payments to general practice – England’ report published in December 2018, covering the 2017/18 financial year, provides information on National Health Service payments to individual providers of general practice services in England. The report is available from the NHS Digital website at the following link:
In 2017/18, there were 1,193 practices with a ‘rural’ indicator and these received total payments of £1,738,904,818, an average payment of £1,457,590 per rural practice.
NHS England has not conducted an analysis of information held on practice closures to distinguish between urban and rural practice closures.
NHS England and the British Medical Association’s General Practitioners Committee have agreed a five-year GP contract framework from 2019/20 which marks some of the biggest general practice contract changes in over a decade and will be essential to deliver the ambitions set out in the NHS Long Term Plan through strong general practice services. The contract increases investment and more certainty around funding and looks to reduce pressure and stabilise general practice. It will ensure general practice plays a leading role in every Primary Care Network which will include bigger teams of health professionals working together in local communities. It will mean much closer working between networks and their Integrated Care System. This builds on the General Practice Forward View commitments which included dedicated £40 million support programme for struggling practices to help them become more resilient – with over 3,000 packages of support delivered in 2017/18.
Asked by: Nigel Evans (Conservative - Ribble Valley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he plans to allocate additional funding to the Childhood Obesity Strategy.
Answered by Steve Brine
There are no current plans to allocate additional funding to the childhood obesity strategy.
Asked by: Nigel Evans (Conservative - Ribble Valley)
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 improve the uptake of cervical screening within the recommended time frame.
Answered by Steve Brine
The Department, Public Health England (PHE) and NHS England continue to work together to understand the reasons for the decline in cervical screening uptake and to support the NHS and local authorities (LAs) to address them. This includes access to timely and useful data for benchmarking; providing evidence on best practice to increase uptake among women who wish to be screened; using governance levers to advise the NHS and LAs; and working in partnership with commissioners, providers and charities. This has been, and continues to be, an ongoing focus to improve the cervical screening service and its uptake among women in the United Kingdom.
In August 2018, PHE published ‘Cervical Screening: ideas for helping to improve access and uptake’; the guidance is available to view at the following link:
Asked by: Nigel Evans (Conservative - Ribble Valley)
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 potential merits of allocating funding for additional domestic medical student places to meet NHS demand.
Answered by Steve Barclay - Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
The Government has announced a record increase of an additional 1,500 medical school places for domestic students in England – 630 started this September, with a further 690 starting in 2019/20 and the final 180 in 2020/21. This expansion will also deliver five brand new medical schools in Sunderland, Lancashire, Chelmsford, Lincoln and Canterbury.
On the back of the additional £20 billion additional National Health Service funding, NHS leaders are currently producing a long-term plan that will include proposals for the NHS workforce, training and leadership, which the Government will consider and respond to in due course.
Asked by: Nigel Evans (Conservative - Ribble Valley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many hospitals are complaint with the Accessible Information Standard.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
Information on how many hospitals are compliant with the Accessible Information Standard is not held centrally.
Compliance with the Standard is a legal duty and organisations that provide National Health Service care or adult social care have been required to follow the Standard in full since 1 August 2016. Compliance with the Standard is also a requirement of the NHS Standard Contract 2018/19.
The specification for the Standard makes it clear that commissioning organisations must actively support compliance by organisations from which they commission services and must also seek assurance from providers in this regard.
Asked by: Nigel Evans (Conservative - Ribble Valley)
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 (a) availability and (b) adequacy of GP services as a result of the publication of the British Social Attitudes Survey.
Answered by Steve Brine
The Government has committed to ensuring everyone across the country has easier and more convenient access to general practice services, including appointments in the evenings and weekends.
The latest National Health Service planning guidance, issued by NHS England in February 2018, requires clinical commissioning groups to provide extended access to general practice to their whole population by 1 October 2018, to ensure additional capacity is in place ahead of winter 2018. This includes ensuring that access is available during peak times of demand, including bank holidays and across the Easter, Christmas and New Year periods. Currently, 52% of the population is benefitting from extended access, including evening and weekend appointments.
The general practitioner (GP) Patient Survey for 2017 found that 85% of patients had a good overall experience of their GP surgery and 95% of respondents said that they have confidence and trust in their GP.
Asked by: Nigel Evans (Conservative - Ribble Valley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of introducing regulations requiring all public buildings to have access to a defibrillator.
Answered by Steve Brine
The Government recognises that better provision of defibrillators and increasing the number of people trained in cardiopulmonary resuscitation could help save more lives of those who have a cardiac arrest outside a hospital setting. We therefore encourage organisations to consider purchasing a defibrillator as part of their first-aid equipment, particularly for places where there are high concentrations of people.
The Government does not believe that a regulatory approach is the best solution for this issue. In order to further support the National Health Service and local communities, the Government has provided £2 million to make public access defibrillators more widely available and to increase the numbers of people trained in cardiopulmonary resuscitation.
Asked by: Nigel Evans (Conservative - Ribble Valley)
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 the survival rates of out of hospital cardiac arrests; and what role automatic external defibrillators will play in those plans.
Answered by Steve Brine
The Government recognises that better provision of defibrillators and increasing the number of people trained in cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) could help save more lives of those who have a cardiac arrest outside a hospital setting. We therefore encourage organisations to consider purchasing a defibrillator as part of their first-aid equipment, particularly for places where there are high concentrations of people.
The Department published the Cardiovascular Disease (CVD) Outcomes Strategy in 2013, which highlighted the importance of CPR and availability of Public Access Defibrillators.
NHS England has advised that, since the publication of the Strategy, the Community Resuscitation Steering Group (CRSG) has taken steps to address issues relating to CVD outcomes.
These steps include:
- HM Treasury allocated two tranches of £1 million each to purchasing more Public Access Defibrillators (PADs) and the British Heart Foundation (BHF) has supervised its distribution; and
- UK Resuscitation Council, BHF, and Arrhythmia Alliance have all undertaken campaigns to increase awareness of CPR and availability of PADs.