Asked by: Charlotte Leslie (Conservative - Bristol North West)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department takes to use the research base for clinical and management procedure that have been exported by groups of NHS clinicians for use in other countries to inform best practice within the NHS.
Answered by David Mowat
The Department is working closely with the Department for International Trade and NHS England to promote the expertise and reputation of National Health Service bodies (and the wider health sector) abroad. This contributes to the health and wellbeing of patients in other countries, protects United Kingdom intellectual property so that the benefits of exported health practice come back into the UK, and generates a return for the NHS.
Asked by: Charlotte Leslie (Conservative - Bristol North West)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what his Department's policy is on supporting clinicians on the export for use in other countries of clinical and management procedures that have been developed in the NHS.
Answered by David Mowat
The Department is working closely with the Department for International Trade and NHS England to promote the expertise and reputation of National Health Service bodies (and the wider health sector) abroad. This contributes to the health and wellbeing of patients in other countries, protects United Kingdom intellectual property so that the benefits of exported health practice come back into the UK, and generates a return for the NHS.
Asked by: Charlotte Leslie (Conservative - Bristol North West)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the (a) clinical and (b) cost effectiveness of the provision of bariatric surgery alongside other preventative public health measures in reducing cases of type two diabetes.
Answered by Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
It is for the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) to provide national clinical guidance and advice, based on best evidence of clinical and cost effectiveness, for use of interventions, technology and devices.
NICE has published a clinical guideline on the identification, assessment and management of obesity that contains recommendations for assessment for bariatric surgery to be considered for people with recent-onset type 2 diabetes within specified criteria:
https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cg189/chapter/1-recommendations
It has not, however, published guidance on the specific role of bariatric surgery as an intervention to prevent type 2 diabetes in those at high risk.
Asked by: Charlotte Leslie (Conservative - Bristol North West)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many contracts (a) his Department and (b) its non-departmental public bodies and agencies have awarded to Louise Guss Consulting Ltd since 2013.
Answered by David Mowat
The Department can confirm following a detailed search of its Business Management Services database, that “Louise Guss Consulting Ltd” are not a registered supplier and consequently there are no records of any spend or contracts being held with this company.
Responses from all of the Department’s Non-Departmental Public Bodies and its agencies, including Special Health Authorities, have confirmed that no contracts are or have been held with Louise Guss Consulting Ltd since 2013.
Asked by: Charlotte Leslie (Conservative - Bristol North West)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many contracts (a) his Department and (b) its non-departmental bodies and agencies have awarded to The Grace Partnership since 2014.
Answered by Philip Dunne
The Department can confirm following a detailed search of its Business Management Services database, that “The Grace Partnership” are not a registered supplier and consequently there are no records of any spend or contracts being held with this company.
Responses from all of the Department’s Non-Departmental Public Bodies and its agencies, including special health authorities, have confirmed that no contracts are or have been held with The Grace Partnership since 2014.
Asked by: Charlotte Leslie (Conservative - Bristol North West)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to reduce the incidence of 999 emergency services being used to provide non-emergency social care.
Answered by David Mowat
The Care Act 2014 promotes wellbeing and independence, and does not just wait to respond when people reach a crisis point.
The Care Act requires that local authorities must provide or arrange for the provision of services, facilities or resources that will contribute towards preventing, delaying or reducing the needs for care and support of adults and carers.
The Act also places a duty on local authorities to establish and maintain a service for providing people in its area with information and advice relating to care and support for adults and support for carers. The Government provided local authorities with start-up funding of £32.5 million capital funding to support them to develop new online services that provide people with more consistent and more easily accessible information about their local care and support options.
In addition, NHS Choices has a selection of pages aimed at providing targeted information and advice on care and support. This includes a direct link (based on post code) to each local authority website’s contact page on how a person can access a needs assessment.
NHS England’s review of urgent and emergency care proposes a fundamental shift in the way urgent and emergency care services are provided, delivering more care closer to home where clinically appropriate.
The integrated urgent care service will build on the success of NHS 111 and will help to deliver the benefits for all patients set out in the Urgent and Emergency Care review. The intent is to enable commissioners to deliver a functionally integrated 24/7 urgent care service that is the ‘front door’ of the National Health Service, and which provides the public with access to both treatment and clinical advice. This will include NHS 111 providers and general practitioner out-of-hours services, community services, ambulance services, emergency departments and social care.
Asked by: Charlotte Leslie (Conservative - Bristol North West)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, whether his Department has made an assessment of the potential detriment to patients of NICE postponing until 2018 its decision on the use of bisphosphonates for breast cancer patients.
Answered by Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
The current National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guideline, Early and locally advanced breast cancer: diagnosis and management (CG80), makes the following recommendation:
“Offer bisphosphonates to patients identified by algorithms 1 and 2 in ‘Guidance for the management of breast cancer treatment-induced bone loss: a consensus position statement from a UK expert group’ (2008) (see appendix 2 of the full guideline page 113).”
NICE is currently updating this guidance and the use of adjuvant bisphosphonates has been identified as one of the key areas that will be covered in the update, which is scheduled for publication in July 2018.
The guideline has been scheduled to take into account the latest available evidence on the adjuvant use of bisphosphonates for the treatment of breast cancer. In the absence of guidance from NICE, clinicians and commissioners should make decisions on the adjuvant use of bisphosphonates based on an assessment of the available evidence.
Asked by: Charlotte Leslie (Conservative - Bristol North West)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that medicines distributed within the UK on European Medicines Agency licence continue to be distributed once the UK leaves the EU.
Answered by David Mowat
The Government is very aware of the need to ensure that medicines already on the United Kingdom market, and which were licensed through the European Medicines Agency’s centralised procedure, remain approved for use across the UK after our exit from the European Union. This is not an issue which needs to form part of any negotiation, but will be within the UK’s own competence.