Asked by: Clive Efford (Labour - Eltham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to ensure that the boards of (a) NHS Trusts, (b) Care Commissioning Groups and (c) other NHS bodies include allied health professionals; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
Allied Health Professionals (AHPs) can be on the boards of any National Health Service body.
NHS England published the ‘AHPs into Action’ framework in January 2017, which outlines the impact and potential of AHPs, including as members of boards.
NHS Improvement has commissioned research into AHP leadership in NHS provider organisations, and has published ‘Leadership of allied health professions in trusts: what exists and what matters’. There has been a measurable increase in the number of AHP strategic leadership positions over the last two years.
Asked by: Clive Efford (Labour - Eltham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to ensure that multi-disciplinary community rehabilitation services are available throughout England; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
Rehabilitation services should be built around the patient, addressing their needs in an integrated manner and close to home, where safe to do so. This patient centred, integrated approach based closer to home, underpins the system’s wider approach to transforming our health and care system through sustainability and transformation partnerships and new care models.
NHS England’s Commissioning Rehabilitation Guidance (2016) encourages and supports commissioning of integrated, person-centred rehabilitation services delivered close to home across England. It states that that effective partnerships across teams are central to providing the right support to patients. This includes providing rehabilitation services that meet both mental and physical health needs.
Asked by: Clive Efford (Labour - Eltham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will include musculoskeletal disorders in the long-term plan for the NHS to reduce loss of working days; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
In 2017, there was a historic low of working days lost due to musculoskeletal disorders (MSK) related sickness absence. However, MSK disorders remain the second largest reason for working days lost due to sickness absence – second only to minor illnesses (like colds and flu)1.
This is why in ‘Improving Lives, the Future of Work, Health and Disability’2 this Government committed itself to ensuring that individuals suffering from MSK disorders get higher-quality, more joined up support - in the workplace and across the health and welfare systems.
The Government’s own strategy, includes research to build our understanding of existing MSK provision and piloting new models of service provision. The intention is to build our understanding of ‘what works’ to improve employment outcomes for individuals with MSK disorders, in order to inform future action.
The Government expects National Health Service leaders, clinicians and experts to develop the long-term plan to ensure that the NHS can cope with the serious demand and cost pressures it faces in the future. The plan should be published later this year.
Notes:
1Labour Force Survey person datasets, ONS. 2018.
2Improving lives: the future of work, health and disability November 2017
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/improving-lives-the-future-of-work-health-and-disability
Asked by: Clive Efford (Labour - Eltham)
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 reduce the number of working days lost as a result of musculoskeletal disorders; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
In 2017, there was a historic low of working days lost due to musculoskeletal disorders (MSK) related sickness absence. However, MSK disorders remain the second largest reason for working days lost due to sickness absence – second only to minor illnesses (like colds and flu)1.
This is why in ‘Improving Lives, the Future of Work, Health and Disability’2 this Government committed itself to ensuring that individuals suffering from MSK disorders get higher-quality, more joined up support - in the workplace and across the health and welfare systems.
The Government’s own strategy, includes research to build our understanding of existing MSK provision and piloting new models of service provision. The intention is to build our understanding of ‘what works’ to improve employment outcomes for individuals with MSK disorders, in order to inform future action.
The Government expects National Health Service leaders, clinicians and experts to develop the long-term plan to ensure that the NHS can cope with the serious demand and cost pressures it faces in the future. The plan should be published later this year.
Notes:
1Labour Force Survey person datasets, ONS. 2018.
2Improving lives: the future of work, health and disability November 2017
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/improving-lives-the-future-of-work-health-and-disability
Asked by: Clive Efford (Labour - Eltham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what proportion of stroke survivors are given a rehabilitation assessment before they are discharged; what steps he is taking to ensure that all patients receive that assessment; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Steve Brine
Data from the Sentinel Stroke National Audit Programme for the year April 2017 to March 2018 (which covers England, Wales and Northern Ireland) shows that 83.8% of patients spend at least 90% of their hospital stay on a specialist stroke unit, all of which provide coordinated multidisciplinary care and rehabilitation and that almost everyone with a stroke disability received in-patient therapy assessment.
Asked by: Clive Efford (Labour - Eltham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to his oral answer of 6 February 2018, Official Report, column 1351, in which document di the King's Fund state that accountable care organisations and integrated care systems make a massive difference in care to patients.
Answered by Steve Barclay - Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
The need to bring providers together and dissolve the historical partitions between primary, community, mental health, social care and acute services is widely acknowledged. Accountable care organisations (ACOs) are means of achieving this as they involve a single provider taking contractual responsibility for providing a range of services, spanning primary, acute, community and mental health.
The move towards accountable care organisations has been supported by the King’s Fund.
The King’s Fund reports are available at:
https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/publications/making-sense-accountable-care
These articles highlight the positive impact and potential more integrated and accountable care has for England.
Asked by: Clive Efford (Labour - Eltham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to his oral answer of 14 November 2017, Official Report column, 143, what estimate he has made of the rates of inflationary increase in NHS tariff costs for musculoskeletal services under the Circle contract to Lewisham and Greenwich Healthcare Trust; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Steve Brine
The Department has made no such assessment as this is a matter for Greenwich Clinical Commissioning Group which is responsible for commissioning health services and getting the best value for money for its local population.
Asked by: Clive Efford (Labour - Eltham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many complaints he has received about ambulance and patient transfer services provided by G4S; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Philip Dunne
A search of the Department’s Ministerial correspondence database has identified four complaints received since November 2016 about ambulance and patient transfer services provided by G4S. This figure represents correspondence received by the Department’s Ministerial correspondence unit only.
Asked by: Clive Efford (Labour - Eltham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the risk to patients caused by delays to the transfer of patient records to GPs under the primary care support services contract; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Steve Brine
NHS England recognises that there have been transition issues following the transfer of primary care support services to Capita. Over recent months, services have improved, as demonstrated through increased performance levels, reductions in outstanding issues and complaints, and improvements in customer satisfaction, as measured in the most recent user satisfaction survey.
The contract with Capita is underpinned by a number of robust contractual mechanisms designed to ensure that primary care support services are delivered in line with expectations. These include financial service credits where agreed performance targets across the service are not achieved.
NHS England advises that, following the closure of the Henley Cross GP practice, there were 3,800 paper medical records which were collected by Primary Care Support England (PCSE). 3,302 of these relate to patients who have re-registered with a new practice and these medical records have been sent to those practices. In line with delivery timescales, there are 435 records which PCSE is currently preparing for despatch following recent patient registrations at new general practitioner (GP) practices. The remaining 63 relate to patients who are yet to register with a GP practice and these are being held, in line with agreed processes, in PCSE’s storage facility.
Where a GP has an urgent clinical need to access information in a medical record, there is an established urgent request process in place, where PCSE will facilitate contact between current and previous GP practices to ensure the details get to the relevant clinician as a priority - within two working days.
Asked by: Clive Efford (Labour - Eltham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many and what proportion of patients' records formerly held by Henley Cross GP practice in Tudway Road, Greenwich have yet to be delivered to new GP practices since it closed in February 2017; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Steve Brine
NHS England recognises that there have been transition issues following the transfer of primary care support services to Capita. Over recent months, services have improved, as demonstrated through increased performance levels, reductions in outstanding issues and complaints, and improvements in customer satisfaction, as measured in the most recent user satisfaction survey.
The contract with Capita is underpinned by a number of robust contractual mechanisms designed to ensure that primary care support services are delivered in line with expectations. These include financial service credits where agreed performance targets across the service are not achieved.
NHS England advises that, following the closure of the Henley Cross GP practice, there were 3,800 paper medical records which were collected by Primary Care Support England (PCSE). 3,302 of these relate to patients who have re-registered with a new practice and these medical records have been sent to those practices. In line with delivery timescales, there are 435 records which PCSE is currently preparing for despatch following recent patient registrations at new general practitioner (GP) practices. The remaining 63 relate to patients who are yet to register with a GP practice and these are being held, in line with agreed processes, in PCSE’s storage facility.
Where a GP has an urgent clinical need to access information in a medical record, there is an established urgent request process in place, where PCSE will facilitate contact between current and previous GP practices to ensure the details get to the relevant clinician as a priority - within two working days.