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Written Question
Palliative Care: Finance
Wednesday 30th October 2019

Asked by: Stephen Hepburn (Independent - Jarrow)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what his policy is on allocating funding to hospices in (a) the North East and (b) the UK; and what level of funding his Department plans to allocate to palliative care in each financial year until 2025.

Answered by Caroline Dinenage

As with the vast majority of National Health Service services, the commissioning of palliative and end of life care is a local matter, over which individual clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) have responsibility. CCGs are best placed to understand the needs of local populations and allocate funding for services to meet those needs from the overall resource allocations they receive.

Much of the palliative care patients receive will be provided either in outpatient or community settings, by nurses, community teams or general practitioners (GPs) as part of general NHS services provision, rather than as an identified palliative care service. In such services, data are either not available or do not identify palliative treatment. In addition, social and voluntary sector organisations can provide additional support to patients and the end of life. Therefore, figures for the total cost or allocation of funding for palliative and end of life care services are not available.

The vast majority of hospices were established from charitable and philanthropic donations and are therefore primarily charity-funded and independently run. However, they receive some statutory funding from CCGs and the Government for providing local NHS services. The majority of decisions regarding the statutory funding hospices receive, are a local matter.

Published in January 2019, the NHS Long Term Plan has a commitment to match CCGs up to £7 million from NHS England for Children and Young People’s Palliative and End of Life Care (CYP PEOLC), on condition of £7 million match funding from CCGs by 2023/24. This will create a total planned additional spending of at least £14million a year for CYP PEOLC services across all providers.


In addition, on 20 August the Government announced that £25 million in funding for hospices and palliative care services. This will help alleviate pressures on hospices and boost our local palliative care services; providing for new services – such as out-of-hours support, respite care and specialist community teams. Importantly, the funding is for adults and children and young people’s hospices and palliative services; this is non-recurrent funding and the £25 million announcement relates to 2019/20 only and; the money is to be spent locally, improving care for patients as soon as possible.

NHS England and NHS Improvement have been working to get this money into local areas as a priority and have uplifted CCG resource allocations to reflect the new funding this month. The expectation is that CCGs work collaboratively to assign the money to hospices and palliative services as a sustainability and transformation partnership (STP) across their STP footprint.

On 1 July 2019, the Government announced plans to increase Children’s Hospice grant from £12 million in 2019/20 to £25 million by 2023/24. The grant is provided to children’s hospices to compensate for lower levels of local statutory funding they receive, compared to adult hospices. The planned grant allocations by financial year are as follows: 2020/21 £15 million; 2021/22 £17 million; 2022/23 £21 million; 2023/24 £25 million. Plans for financial year 2024/25 yet to be developed as the Long Term Plan only covers the period to 2023/24.


Written Question
General Practitioners: Tyne and Wear
Wednesday 30th October 2019

Asked by: Stephen Hepburn (Independent - Jarrow)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many practising GPs there were in (a) Jarrow constituency and (b) South Tyneside in each year since 2010.

Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)

The number of headcount general practitioners (excluding locums), working in general practice for each year since September 2015 is available in the following table. General practitioner (GP) locums are excluded as improvements have been made to GP locum recording methodology and figures are not comparable prior to December 2017. Current data is not comparable to 2010. As such, September 2015-18 data has been provided. Figures are not available for Jarrow constituency.

South Tyneside Clinical Commissioning Group Headcount GPs (excluding locums)

September 2015

106

September 2016

104

September 2017

99

September 2018

99

Notes:

  1. Data as at 30 September 2015-2018.
  2. Figures shown do not include GPs working in prisons, army bases, educational establishments, specialist care centres including drug rehabilitation centres and walk-in centres.
  3. Figures contain estimates for practices that did not provide fully valid General Medical Practice staff records.
  4. Headcount totals are unlikely to equal the sum of the components. Further information on the headcount methodology is available in the General Practice Workforce publication.
  5. The figures for GPs excluding Locums as this data is not comparable across the time series.
  6. Data must be compared from the same time point in the year, therefore September 2018 data is provided to allow comparison the earliest available data. Data covering 30 September 2019 will be published on 28 November 2019 and is available at the following link:

https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/general-and-personal-medical-services

  1. Data collected and published prior to September 2015 is not comparable due to a change in data collection methodology.
  2. “-” denotes zero, “0” denotes greater than 0, less than 0.5, “..” denotes not applicable.
  3. Source – NHS Digital


Written Question
General Practitioners: Standards
Wednesday 30th October 2019

Asked by: Stephen Hepburn (Independent - Jarrow)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the average waiting time was for a patient to see a GP in (a) Jarrow constituency, (b) South Tyneside, (c) Tyne and Wear, (d) the North East and (e) England in each year since 2010.

Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)

Data on appointments in general practice have only been available since November 2017. The most recent data on the time between booking an appointment with a general practice and having the appointment (in days) for South Tyneside Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), NHS England North East and Yorkshire (Cumbria and North East) Regional Local Office, and England are presented in the table below as the average over the 12 months from September 2018 to August 2019. NHS Digital is unable to provide data for all the geographical areas requested as the data is collected at CCG level, but has provided data for three included in the table.

The data is taken from the NHS Digital publication ‘Appointments in General Practice’. This is a new experimental data collection which is still being refined and improved.

It should be noted that the ‘time from booking to appointment’ refers only to the time elapsed between the successful booking of an appointment and the appointment actually taking place. The data does not take into consideration that many patients will be appropriately booking ahead as part of the continuity of care they receive for long-term conditions.

South Tyneside CCG

NHS England North East and Yorkshire (Cumbria and North East) Regional Local Office

England

Distribution of average time elapsed between booking an appointment and the appointment taking place, September 2018 to August 2019. (Numbers may not add to 100% due to rounding.)

Same Day

38%

40%

42%

1 Day

9%

7%

7%

2 to 7 Days

25%

21%

20%

8 to 14 Days

13%

14%

14%

15 to 21 Days

6%

7%

8%

22 to 28 Days

4%

5%

5%

More than 28 Days

3%

5%

5%

Total

100.0%

100.0%

100.0%

Notes

  1. There are several factors that drive the time from a booking to an appointment. This includes appointment availability at the practice, patient availability, the urgency of the appointment and general practitioner (GP) advice.
  2. The data does not differentiate between emergency and routine appointments in general practice.
  3. The data does not include any information about the patients or clinical information
  4. The data in the response includes appointments with all healthcare professional types, including GPs and other practice staff.
  5. Not all practices in England are included in the appointments in general practice publication, meaning the total number of appointments is not known.
  6. Same day and next day bookings are of particular interest so are presented here separately. Further bookings are presented grouped by weeks.
  7. The number of appointments that have already happened is provided as recorded in participating practices in England. The data presented only contains information which was captured on the GP practice systems. This limits the activity reported on and does not represent all work happening within a primary care setting.

Written Question
Palliative Care: Finance
Wednesday 30th October 2019

Asked by: Stephen Hepburn (Independent - Jarrow)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what funding his Department plans to allocate to end of life care in each of the next five years.

Answered by Caroline Dinenage

As with the vast majority of National Health Service services, the commissioning of palliative and end of life care is a local matter, over which individual clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) have responsibility. CCGs are best placed to understand the needs of local populations and allocate funding for services to meet those needs from the overall resource allocations they receive.

Much of the palliative care patients receive will be provided either in outpatient or community settings, by nurses, community teams or general practitioners (GPs) as part of general NHS services provision, rather than as an identified palliative care service. In such services, data are either not available or do not identify palliative treatment. In addition, social and voluntary sector organisations can provide additional support to patients and the end of life. Therefore, figures for the total cost or allocation of funding for palliative and end of life care services are not available.

The vast majority of hospices were established from charitable and philanthropic donations and are therefore primarily charity-funded and independently run. However, they receive some statutory funding from CCGs and the Government for providing local NHS services. The majority of decisions regarding the statutory funding hospices receive, are a local matter.

Published in January 2019, the NHS Long Term Plan has a commitment to match CCGs up to £7 million from NHS England for Children and Young People’s Palliative and End of Life Care (CYP PEOLC), on condition of £7 million match funding from CCGs by 2023/24. This will create a total planned additional spending of at least £14million a year for CYP PEOLC services across all providers.


In addition, on 20 August the Government announced that £25 million in funding for hospices and palliative care services. This will help alleviate pressures on hospices and boost our local palliative care services; providing for new services – such as out-of-hours support, respite care and specialist community teams. Importantly, the funding is for adults and children and young people’s hospices and palliative services; this is non-recurrent funding and the £25 million announcement relates to 2019/20 only and; the money is to be spent locally, improving care for patients as soon as possible.

NHS England and NHS Improvement have been working to get this money into local areas as a priority and have uplifted CCG resource allocations to reflect the new funding this month. The expectation is that CCGs work collaboratively to assign the money to hospices and palliative services as a sustainability and transformation partnership (STP) across their STP footprint.

On 1 July 2019, the Government announced plans to increase Children’s Hospice grant from £12 million in 2019/20 to £25 million by 2023/24. The grant is provided to children’s hospices to compensate for lower levels of local statutory funding they receive, compared to adult hospices. The planned grant allocations by financial year are as follows: 2020/21 £15 million; 2021/22 £17 million; 2022/23 £21 million; 2023/24 £25 million. Plans for financial year 2024/25 yet to be developed as the Long Term Plan only covers the period to 2023/24.


Written Question
Hospices
Wednesday 30th October 2019

Asked by: Stephen Hepburn (Independent - Jarrow)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many operational hospices there were in (a) the North East, and (b) the UK in each year since 2010.

Answered by Caroline Dinenage

Data on the total funding allocated to hospice services in England is not routinely collected centrally, as the vast majority of funding decisions are a matter for local commissioners. Funding in the constituent countries of the United Kingdom is a matter for the devolved administration of those countries.


Written Question
Palliative Care: Finance
Wednesday 30th October 2019

Asked by: Stephen Hepburn (Independent - Jarrow)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what his policy is on the funding of hospices; and what levels of funding his Department plans to allocate to palliative care in each financial year until 2025.

Answered by Caroline Dinenage

As with the vast majority of National Health Service services, the commissioning of palliative and end of life care is a local matter, over which individual clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) have responsibility. CCGs are best placed to understand the needs of local populations and allocate funding for services to meet those needs from the overall resource allocations they receive.

Much of the palliative care patients receive will be provided either in outpatient or community settings, by nurses, community teams or general practitioners (GPs) as part of general NHS services provision, rather than as an identified palliative care service. In such services, data are either not available or do not identify palliative treatment. In addition, social and voluntary sector organisations can provide additional support to patients and the end of life. Therefore, figures for the total cost or allocation of funding for palliative and end of life care services are not available.

The vast majority of hospices were established from charitable and philanthropic donations and are therefore primarily charity-funded and independently run. However, they receive some statutory funding from CCGs and the Government for providing local NHS services. The majority of decisions regarding the statutory funding hospices receive, are a local matter.

Published in January 2019, the NHS Long Term Plan has a commitment to match CCGs up to £7 million from NHS England for Children and Young People’s Palliative and End of Life Care (CYP PEOLC), on condition of £7 million match funding from CCGs by 2023/24. This will create a total planned additional spending of at least £14million a year for CYP PEOLC services across all providers.


In addition, on 20 August the Government announced that £25 million in funding for hospices and palliative care services. This will help alleviate pressures on hospices and boost our local palliative care services; providing for new services – such as out-of-hours support, respite care and specialist community teams. Importantly, the funding is for adults and children and young people’s hospices and palliative services; this is non-recurrent funding and the £25 million announcement relates to 2019/20 only and; the money is to be spent locally, improving care for patients as soon as possible.

NHS England and NHS Improvement have been working to get this money into local areas as a priority and have uplifted CCG resource allocations to reflect the new funding this month. The expectation is that CCGs work collaboratively to assign the money to hospices and palliative services as a sustainability and transformation partnership (STP) across their STP footprint.

On 1 July 2019, the Government announced plans to increase Children’s Hospice grant from £12 million in 2019/20 to £25 million by 2023/24. The grant is provided to children’s hospices to compensate for lower levels of local statutory funding they receive, compared to adult hospices. The planned grant allocations by financial year are as follows: 2020/21 £15 million; 2021/22 £17 million; 2022/23 £21 million; 2023/24 £25 million. Plans for financial year 2024/25 yet to be developed as the Long Term Plan only covers the period to 2023/24.


Written Question
Orkambi
Wednesday 30th October 2019

Asked by: Stephen Hepburn (Independent - Jarrow)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent progress his Department has made on negotiations between NHS England and Vertex pharmaceuticals on making Orkambi available on the NHS for people diagnosed with cystic fibrosis.

Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)

On 24 October, NHS England and NHS Improvement announced that a deal had been agreed with the company Vertex to make Orkambi and its other licensed cystic fibrosis drugs available to National Health Service patients in England.

This deal, while commercially confidential, constitutes good value for the NHS, is backed by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence and will benefit around 5,000 patients with cystic fibrosis. NHS England and NHS Improvement have announced that there is no cap on patient numbers and all patients who might benefit can now get these treatments on the NHS. Clinicians will be able to begin prescribing these drugs within 30 days of this announcement.


Written Question
Hospices: Closures
Wednesday 30th October 2019

Asked by: Stephen Hepburn (Independent - Jarrow)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many hospices have closed in the (a) North East and (b) UK in each year since 2010.

Answered by Caroline Dinenage

Data on the total funding allocated to hospice services in England is not routinely collected centrally, as the vast majority of funding decisions are a matter for local commissioners. Funding in the constituent countries of the United Kingdom is a matter for the devolved administration of those countries.


Written Question
Health Services: South Tyneside
Wednesday 30th October 2019

Asked by: Stephen Hepburn (Independent - Jarrow)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much funding has been allocated from the public purse for NHS services in South Tyneside in each year since 2010.

Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)

Clinical commissioning group (CCG) allocations for South Tyneside CCG, which covers Jarrow, are shown in the attached table. The CCG is expected to receive more than the England average per head per year in every year from 2019/20 to 2023/24. It has also received above the England average per head per year from 2013/14 to 2017/18.

In 2019/20, South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust was allocated £2 million Public Dividend Capital for GDE Fast Follower scheme. In addition, North East Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust, which covers South Tyneside and Jarrow, secured £835,000

The Trust’s predecessor, City Hospitals Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust, also secured a £887,000 Public Dividend Capital award as part of a national programme for Energy Efficient LED Lighting.

The Department are also aware of a likely award of Public Dividend Capital relating to Urgent and Emergency Care Services provision which is in the process of being allocated and there are a number of ongoing capital funding programmes that the Trust may be considering applications for.


Written Question
Palliative Care: Expenditure
Wednesday 30th October 2019

Asked by: Stephen Hepburn (Independent - Jarrow)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much funding was allocated to palliative care in (a) Jarrow constituency, (b) South Tyneside, (c) the North East and (d) the UK in each year since 2010.

Answered by Caroline Dinenage

Data on the total funding allocated to hospice services in England is not routinely collected centrally, as the vast majority of funding decisions are a matter for local commissioners. Funding in the constituent countries of the United Kingdom is a matter for the devolved administration of those countries.