Asked by: Cat Smith (Labour - Lancaster and Fleetwood)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 14 March 2023 to Question 162208 on Surgical Hubs, how many of the surgical hubs (a) are going through accreditation (b) have been refused accreditation and (c) have received accreditation.
Answered by Will Quince
There currently are 87 established hubs, but that is subject to change as the Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) team within NHS England proceed with the validation process. The accreditation scheme is open to all hubs and they will be invited to take part in a phased process.
Eight surgical hub sites have received GIRFT accreditation as part of the pilot programme and no hubs were refused accreditation. A further nine hubs are planned to go through the next accreditation round commencing in April 2023.
Asked by: Cat Smith (Labour - Lancaster and Fleetwood)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many surgical hubs are in operation; and what the timescales are for future rollouts of those hubs.
Answered by Will Quince
There currently are 87 surgical hubs in operation. NHS England continue to assess sites to ensure they meet the definition of a surgical hub and thus this figure may still be subject to change during this process.
In the 2021 Spending Review, the Department agreed £1.5 billion of capital funding over three years as part of a Targeted Investment Fund to support elective recovery, including the rollout of new and expanded hub sites. On this basis, we aim to rollout new and expanded surgical hubs by March 2025.
Asked by: Cat Smith (Labour - Lancaster and Fleetwood)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the Institute for Fiscal Studies report entitled one year on from the backlog recovery plan: what next for NHS waiting lists, published in February 2023, what assessment he has made of the implications for his policies of that report's findings on NHS waitlists in 2023 and early 2024; and if he will introduce a requirement to provide personalised pre-operative care for people on waiting lists for surgery.
Answered by Will Quince
The Department considers a wide range of material when developing policies. We do not intend to make a specific assessment of this report.
Strengthening perioperative pathways is one of the National Health Service’s ambitions, starting at the point of referral or listing for surgery to support patients’ preparation.
From April 2023, NHS England is asking providers to establish Perioperative Care Co-ordination teams. These are multidisciplinary teams who will assess health needs to proactively inform pre- and post-operative care and identify surgical risk factors, in order to reduce the chance of cancellations and to improve patient outcomes.
Perioperative Care Co-ordination teams will work with patients to develop personalised preparation plans. These plans will detail both the clinical and the wider support needs of patients both leading up to the time of surgery and in the post-surgical period.
Asked by: Cat Smith (Labour - Lancaster and Fleetwood)
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 implications for his policies of the report by Goodair and Reeves entitled Outsourcing health-care services to the private sector and treatable mortality rates in England, 2013–20: an observational study of NHS privatisation, published in the Lancet in July 2022.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
The safety of all patients, whether they are treated in the National Health Service or the independent sector, is a top priority for the Government. All providers of healthcare are regulated by the Care Quality Commission and follow a set of fundamental standards of safety and quality, below which care should never fall. The Department considers a wide range of material when developing policies. We do not intend to make a specific assessment of this report.
Asked by: Cat Smith (Labour - Lancaster and Fleetwood)
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 adequacy of the level of Government support for Brian House Children's Hospice.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
No specific assessment has been made.
Integrated care boards are required to commission the appropriate palliative and end of life care services considered necessary to meet the reasonable needs of their local populations.
Additionally, NHS England is investing £25 million in the financial year 2023/2024 to provide care close to home for seriously ill children, as and when they need it. Additionally, £7 million in match funding is being made available to commissioners for local children’s palliative and end of life care services for the financial year 2023/2024.
Asked by: Cat Smith (Labour - Lancaster and Fleetwood)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much his Department intends to spend on research into arthritis treatment in each of the next five years.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Over the past five financial years, the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) has invested more than £100 million in funding and support for arthritis research. It is not usual practice to ring-fence funds for particular topics or conditions. Applications are subject to peer review and judged in open competition, with awards being made on the basis of the importance of the topic to patients and health and care services, value for money and scientific quality. Therefore, future spend on arthritis research over the next five years is undetermined.
Asked by: Cat Smith (Labour - Lancaster and Fleetwood)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much his Department has spent on research into arthritis treatment in each of the last five years.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Over the past five financial years, the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) has invested more than £100 million in funding and support for arthritis research. It is not usual practice to ring-fence funds for particular topics or conditions. Applications are subject to peer review and judged in open competition, with awards being made on the basis of the importance of the topic to patients and health and care services, value for money and scientific quality. Therefore, future spend on arthritis research over the next five years is undetermined.
Asked by: Cat Smith (Labour - Lancaster and Fleetwood)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether consideration was given to including guidance on (a) withdrawal from prescription drugs and (b) support for those withdrawing from prescription drugs in the (i) Structured medication reviews and medicines optimisation: guidance, published on 17 September 2020 and (ii) Good for you, good for us, good for everybody - A plan to reduce overprescribing to make patient care better and safer, support the NHS, and reduce carbon emissions, published on 22 September 2021.
Answered by Will Quince
The Structured medication reviews and medicines optimisation guidance sets out implementation guidance for primary care networks (PCNs), including the principles of undertaking a structured medication review (SMR). The guidance provides approaches for health professionals to take when reviewing patients with complex and problematic polypharmacy, specifically those on 10 or more medications. This is not clinical guidance so does not provide detailed information about how medicines are to be withdrawn or stopped.
Any decision to withdraw a medicine would be carried out on an individual basis based on the patient’s individual clinical conditions, the medicines they are taking and their own values and preferences following a shared conversation between the patient and the prescriber.
In December 2018 the Government commissioned Dr Keith Ridge, the then Chief Pharmaceutical Officer for England, to lead a review into the use of medication and overprescribing, the outcome of this was published as ‘Good for you, good for us, good for everybody’. Some of the recommendations in the report are relevant to withdrawal from prescription drugs, including the expansion of Structured Medication Reviews across the National Health Service but do not specifically outline a recommendation to provide guidance on withdrawing prescription medicines.
Asked by: Cat Smith (Labour - Lancaster and Fleetwood)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the Answer of 2 August 2022 to Question 39893 on Prescription Drugs: Addictions, if his Department will issue guidance for patients on tapering the dosage of prescription medicines to reduce the likelihood of an adverse event or withdrawal symptoms.
Answered by Neil O'Brien
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines Medicines associated with dependence or withdrawal symptoms: safe prescribing and withdrawal management for adults includes information for both health professionals and patients on the safe withdrawal from medicines. The Department has no plans to issue separate guidance for patients.
Asked by: Cat Smith (Labour - Lancaster and Fleetwood)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 2 August 2022 to Question 39893 on Prescription Drugs: Addictions, when NHS England plans to publish its framework to support integrated care boards with prescribing medicines that can cause dependence and withdrawal.
Answered by Neil O'Brien
NHS England’s ‘Optimising personalised care for adults prescribed medicines associated with dependence or withdrawal symptoms: Framework for action for integrated care boards and primary care’ will be published in Spring 2023.