Asked by: Andrea Leadsom (Conservative - South Northamptonshire)
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 estimate of the number of NHS dentistry appointments that were available in (a) Towcester, (b) Brackley, and (c) South Northamptonshire constituency in each year between 2018 and 2022.
Answered by Neil O'Brien
The requested data is not available. In July 2022, we announced a package of improvements to the National Health Service dental system, detailed in ‘Our plan for patients’, which outlined the steps we are taking to meet oral health need and increase access to dental care across England. The changes we have implemented include ensuring dentists are renumerated fairly for more complex work, and greater flexibility to reallocate resources and to utilise dentists with greater capacity to deliver more NHS treatment, while enabling full use of the dental team.
These changes came into effect towards the end of 2022. However, we know that we need to do more and continue to build on these reforms. We will be announcing our plan for further reform of the NHS dental system later this year.
NHS England is holding further discussions with the British Dental Association and other stakeholders for additional reforms of the NHS Dental System planned to take place later in 2023.
Asked by: Andrea Leadsom (Conservative - South Northamptonshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to increase the availability of NHS dentistry services in (a) Towcester, (b) Brackley and (c) South Northamptonshire constituency.
Answered by Neil O'Brien
The requested data is not available. In July 2022, we announced a package of improvements to the National Health Service dental system, detailed in ‘Our plan for patients’, which outlined the steps we are taking to meet oral health need and increase access to dental care across England. The changes we have implemented include ensuring dentists are renumerated fairly for more complex work, and greater flexibility to reallocate resources and to utilise dentists with greater capacity to deliver more NHS treatment, while enabling full use of the dental team.
These changes came into effect towards the end of 2022. However, we know that we need to do more and continue to build on these reforms. We will be announcing our plan for further reform of the NHS dental system later this year.
NHS England is holding further discussions with the British Dental Association and other stakeholders for additional reforms of the NHS Dental System planned to take place later in 2023.
Asked by: Andrea Leadsom (Conservative - South Northamptonshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps NHS England is taking to improve dentistry services in (a) South Northamptonshire constituency and (b) Northamptonshire.
Answered by Neil O'Brien
The requested data is not available. In July 2022, we announced a package of improvements to the National Health Service dental system, detailed in ‘Our plan for patients’, which outlined the steps we are taking to meet oral health need and increase access to dental care across England. The changes we have implemented include ensuring dentists are renumerated fairly for more complex work, and greater flexibility to reallocate resources and to utilise dentists with greater capacity to deliver more NHS treatment, while enabling full use of the dental team.
These changes came into effect towards the end of 2022. However, we know that we need to do more and continue to build on these reforms. We will be announcing our plan for further reform of the NHS dental system later this year.
NHS England is holding further discussions with the British Dental Association and other stakeholders for additional reforms of the NHS Dental System planned to take place later in 2023.
Asked by: Andrea Leadsom (Conservative - South Northamptonshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many NHS dentists are registered in (a) Towcester, (b) Brackley and (c) South Northamptonshire constituency.
Answered by Neil O'Brien
The requested data is not available. In July 2022, we announced a package of improvements to the National Health Service dental system, detailed in ‘Our plan for patients’, which outlined the steps we are taking to meet oral health need and increase access to dental care across England. The changes we have implemented include ensuring dentists are renumerated fairly for more complex work, and greater flexibility to reallocate resources and to utilise dentists with greater capacity to deliver more NHS treatment, while enabling full use of the dental team.
These changes came into effect towards the end of 2022. However, we know that we need to do more and continue to build on these reforms. We will be announcing our plan for further reform of the NHS dental system later this year.
NHS England is holding further discussions with the British Dental Association and other stakeholders for additional reforms of the NHS Dental System planned to take place later in 2023.
Asked by: Andrea Leadsom (Conservative - South Northamptonshire)
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 and the NHS have made on plans to produce a digital version of the red book as outlined in the NHS Long Term Plan published in January 2019.
Answered by Neil O'Brien
We are working with NHS England to ensure that plans for digitising the red book align with plans for patient records. Further information will be available in due course.
Asked by: Andrea Leadsom (Conservative - South Northamptonshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to increase the availability of GP appointments; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Neil O'Brien
On 22 September 2022, we announced ‘Our plan for patients’, which contains measures to assist people to make an informed choice on their general practitioner (GP) practice, book an appointment more easily, benefit from more care options and increase the diversity of general practice teams. This aims to increase the availability of appointment types in England.
We are investing at least £1.5 billion to create an additional 50 million general practice appointments by 2024 through increasing and diversifying the workforce. General practice teams include a range of other health professionals in addition to GPs, to respond to the needs of patients and we are on schedule to recruit an additional 26,000 primary care staff.
Asked by: Andrea Leadsom (Conservative - South Northamptonshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that there is a long-term plan to tackle dementia; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
We are reviewing plans for dementia in England and further information will be available in due course.
Asked by: Andrea Leadsom (Conservative - South Northamptonshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department has made an assessment of the potential merits of introducing a unique patient identifier for children to improve health outcomes.
Answered by Neil O'Brien
Every child is assigned a National Health Service (NHS) number at birth or the first time they have contact with NHS services. The NHS number acts as is a unique patient identifier and is used to share information within electronic healthcare records. This contributes to improved health outcomes for children by ensuring that health professionals identify patients correctly and have access to information to inform the delivery of appropriate care.
Through the Health and Care Act 2022, the Government has committed to report on Government’s policy on information sharing in relation to the safeguarding of children, by summer 2023. The report will include an explanation of whether it is the Government’s policy that a consistent child identifier should be used across agencies.
Asked by: Andrea Leadsom (Conservative - South Northamptonshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to reduce NHS waiting times; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Will Quince
The National Health Service will increase bed capacity by the equivalent of at least 7,000 general and acute beds to improve patient flows through hospitals and reduce waiting times. A £500 million Adult Social Care Discharge Fund has been established to reduce delayed discharge and we have allocated an additional £150 million to ambulance services to increase response times and £20 million to upgrade the ambulance fleet.
The target to eliminate waiting times of two years or more for elective procedures was met in July 2022 and we aim to eliminate waiting time of eighteen months or more by April 2023. This will be achieved through increasing capacity, seeking alternate capacity in other trusts or the independent sector and engaging with patients to understand choices made regarding their care.
We have set an expectation that patients who need an appointment with a general practitioner practice within two weeks should receive one and patients with urgent needs should be seen on the same day. ‘Our plan for patients’ includes measures to assist patients to book general practice appointments and diversify general practice teams to deliver over a million additional appointments. The NHS Long Term Plan commits a further £2.3 billion a year to expand mental health services by 2023/24 and enable an additional two million people to be treated by NHS mental health services. We also provided £500 million in 2021/22 to accelerate these plans and address waiting times for mental health services.
Asked by: Andrea Leadsom (Conservative - South Northamptonshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to support people whose cancer treatment was affected by covid-19.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The majority of cancer services were maintained throughout the pandemic. From March 2020 to August 2022, 758,000 people commenced cancer treatment, with 94% of those starting treatment within 31 days. The National Health Service continues to prioritise cancer and rescheduled diagnostic procedures or treatment where care has been affected by the pandemic, supported by local cancer teams.