Asked by: Alex Chalk (Conservative - Cheltenham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he has taken to encourage take-up of the Lyme Disease Action e-learning course amongst primary care practitioners.
Answered by Steve Brine
The e-learning course on Lyme disease co-developed by Lyme Disease Action and the Royal College of General Practitioners is one of a number of resources that exist to support primary care practitioners’ awareness. Primary care practitioners are responsible for their own programme of continuing professional development as required for revalidation. The Government does not endorse one educational opportunity over another.
Public Health England provides information on Lyme disease and tick awareness to the medical profession and holds regular medical training days.
NHS Choices publishes information on its website to raise awareness of Lyme disease to encourage timely medical consultations because early diagnosis and treatment is the best way of limiting complications from infection.
Asked by: Alex Chalk (Conservative - Cheltenham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will subsidise GP's indemnity costs; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Philip Dunne
The cost of indemnity to general practitioners (GPs) is already recognised as a business expense, and reflected in the sums received by GP practices via the GP contract. In recognition of the rising costs of indemnity, NHS England put an extra £30 million in to the GP contract in March 2017 to cover indemnity-related inflation for GPs from 2016-17. A further sum of approximately £30 million will be made available for April 2018.
The change in the personal injury discount rate announced by the former Lord Chancellor (Elizabeth Truss) in February 2017 has significantly increased the cost of claims. The Department is working closely with GPs and Medical Defence Organisations to ensure that appropriate funding is available to meet additional costs to GPs, recognising the crucial role they play in the delivery of National Health Service care.
Asked by: Alex Chalk (Conservative - Cheltenham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps the Government is taking to (a) publicise adolescent mental health issues on the internet and (b) support the prevention of adolescent mental health issues arising from social media.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
The Government works with the online sector and other stakeholders to address the impact of potentially harmful content online given that online harms can have a negative effect on individual's mental health.
The Department has invested:
- £3 million in MindEd, an online training platform for professionals working with children and young people to recognise when a child needs mental health support; and
- £12 million between 2016-20 in Time to Change to challenge mental health stigma, which has reached 750,000 children and young people through social marketing campaigns and improved attitudes of over 4.1 million people in England.
Public Health England has also launched Rise Above, a website to build emotional resilience in young people to help deal with the pressures of growing up, including mental health.
The Government expect websites, including social media companies, to respond quickly to reports of harmful content/abusive behaviour on their networks.
The joint Department of Health and Department of Education Green Paper on children and young people’s mental health will consider action to minimise the risks social media poses, whilst maximising its benefits. Work has started on the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport led cross-Government internet safety strategy which will give us the opportunity to consider issues of online safety for children and young people. We are considering how this will be taken forward under the Digital Charter.
Asked by: Alex Chalk (Conservative - Cheltenham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, whether the Government is able to allocate Competition and Markets Authority fines collected from pharmaceutical manufacturers Pfizer and distributor Flynn Pharma for the purposes of research and treatment for epilepsy patients.
Answered by Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
The decision of the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to fine Pfizer and Flynn Pharma is currently under appeal. As with other fine income, fines levied by the CMA for breaches of competition law are returned to the Consolidated Fund. Receipts from this fine will therefore help fund the £10 billion increase in National Health Service funding set out at the Spending Review. A separate process is available for the Secretary of State for Health to recover damages suffered as a result of this case through the courts. This money would flow back to the NHS for the benefit of patients, based on clinical priorities.
Asked by: Alex Chalk (Conservative - Cheltenham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps the Government is taking to make allergen-free drugs more widely available.
Answered by Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
No medicine is free from side effects and the balance of risks and benefits of medicines are carefully assessed at the time of licensing. Warnings about known side effects, including allergic reactions, are included in the product information for healthcare professionals (the Summary of Product Characteristics) and the Patient Information leaflet which accompanies the medicine. Ingredients (excipients) of known effect are declared on the outer packaging of licensed medicines. Anyone with an allergy should make this known during their discussion about their treatment with their pharmacist or doctor.
Asked by: Alex Chalk (Conservative - Cheltenham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what progress his Department is making on identifying the most effective ways of addressing the root causes of the rising costs of indemnity for GPs.
Answered by David Mowat
Over the summer of 2016, the Department and NHS England established the General Practice Indemnity Review as a short-term, focussed piece of work which sought to examine the extent of inflation in general practitioner (GP) indemnity, the root causes of this, and to identify proposals for improving the situation.
Following that review, the Department and NHS England committed to further work to address the growing cost of claims in relation to clinical negligence claims.
This work has now been incorporated into the Department’s core business. Officials have been working with stakeholders including the Medical Defence Organisations, NHS Litigation Authority and Ministry of Justice to understand and address the root causes of rising indemnity costs – which are similar in both primary and secondary care.
The Department is considering a number of policy options to address rising costs, one of which is a Fixed Recoverable Costs Scheme that would limit recoverable legal costs in clinical negligence claims. A consultation on this measure will be launched shortly.
Work on other policy options will continue over the next year.
Asked by: Alex Chalk (Conservative - Cheltenham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps are being taken to ensure that young people diagnosed with eating disorders requiring in-patient treatment can be admitted to facilities close to home.
Answered by Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
In the Autumn Statement 2014 increased funding of £150 million over the next five years was announced to improve services for children and young people with mental health problems in England. Particular emphasis was placed on improving services for people with eating disorders. A prime focus of the work on eating disorders is about the improved provision of out of hospital care so patients are only admitted to a bed when clinically required.
NHS England has continued to commission additional specialised mental health beds to provide further capacity in areas where it is required. This includes 56 new Tier 4 beds, raising the total to 1,442, the highest this has been.
In addition, NHS England is undertaking a pre-procurement review of Tier 4 services to ensure that the provision of mental health beds across the country supports improved access and care close to home where possible.
Asked by: Alex Chalk (Conservative - Cheltenham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to ensure that women suffering from metastatic HER2 breast cancer receive (a) the Kadcyla form of Trastuzumab emtansine and (b) other required medication.
Answered by Philip Dunne
Improving the availability and use of effective medicines for all cancers, including breast cancer, is a key priority.
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is the independent body that makes recommendations on whether selected drugs and treatments represent a clinically and cost effective use of National Health Service resources. Commissioners are legally required to fund drugs and treatments for the treatment of metastatic HER2 breast cancer recommended in NICE technology appraisal guidance within three months of its final guidance being issued.
NICE technology appraisal guidance, published in December 2015, does not recommend trastuzumab emtansine (Kadcyla) for the treatment of HER2-positive, unresectable locally advanced or metastatic breast cancer after treatment with trastuzumab and a taxane. In the absence of guidance from NICE, it is for commissioners to make decisions on whether to fund new medicines based on an assessment of the available evidence.
Trastuzumab emtansine continues to be available to patients in England through the Cancer Drugs Fund, subject to certain clinical criteria.
The new arrangements for the Fund, which came into effect on 29 July 2016, will ensure that the most promising and innovative medicines get to patients as quickly as possible. In particular, NICE will issue draft guidance on new cancer drugs or significant new licence indications before they have received marketing approval in the United Kingdom. Any drug that receives a positive draft recommendation would then be funded from the point of licence.
Asked by: Alex Chalk (Conservative - Cheltenham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to improve coordination of bed allocation for adult in-patient treatment for patients with eating disorders.
Answered by Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
The Five Year Forward View for Mental Health report published in February 2016 set out the start of a 10 year journey for the transformation of the National Health Service care and a shift towards prevention. The proposed mental health pathway and infrastructure development programme in the report envisages a referral to treatment pathway for eating disorders (adult mental health) being published in 2018/19.
In the Autumn Statement 2014 increased funding of £150 million over the next five years was announced to improve services for children and young people with mental health problems in England. Particular emphasis was placed on improving services for people with eating disorders.
As part of the planning processes, specialised commissioning teams review the needs of service for patients and where possible reflect provision. There is currently significant attention on eating disorders, primarily focussing on Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service but this will extend to the adult pathway of care shortly with the expectation of revised National Institute for health and Care Excellence Guidelines in April 2017. A prime focus of the work on eating disorders is about the improved provision of out of hospital care so patients are only admitted to a bed when clinically required.
Asked by: Alex Chalk (Conservative - Cheltenham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what support the Government is providing to GPs to help them with the cost of insuring work carried out outside normal hours.
Answered by Ben Gummer
The Department and NHS England are working on proposals for discussion with the profession, medical defence organisations, the commercial insurance industry and the NHS Litigation Authority.
This will consider:
― how personal costs of indemnity and clinical insurance can be contained - provided certain clinical governance standards are met, with the objective of reducing the overall costs to the individual;
― the funding routes for indemnity in different models of care; and
― with a specific focus on new models of care such as Primary and Acute Community Services and Multi-Speciality Community Providers and the scope for corporate indemnity, freeing up individuals working in those new models from the burden of personal indemnity costs.
NHS England created the Winter Indemnity Scheme which ran from December 2015 until March 2016, making £2 million available to cover the cost of additional indemnity premiums for doctors to undertake additional out of hours sessions. This was in response to increased demand for appointments during the winter period.