Asked by: David Crausby (Labour - Bolton North East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the effect of the number of paramedics on ambulance services in the North West.
Answered by Philip Dunne
No such assessment has been made.
The latest workforce figures for September 2016 show that there were 1,744 ambulance paramedics at North West Ambulance Service. This is 67 more than in September 2015 (or 4.0%), and 427 more than May 2010 (or 32.4%).
North West Ambulance Service is currently undertaking a recruitment exercise which has led to a significant reduction in the number of vacancies.
Asked by: David Crausby (Labour - Bolton North East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many beds were available at accident and emergency departments in the North West region in each year since 2010.
Answered by Philip Dunne
The information requested is not held centrally.
Asked by: David Crausby (Labour - Bolton North East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if his Department will take steps to improve consumer access to food hygiene ratings through online food ordering platforms.
Answered by Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
The Food Standards Agency is working with businesses in England and Wales offering online ordering to encourage the online publication of ratings. The display of ratings online is currently on a voluntary basis so ultimately it will be for each business to decide whether or not to display the ratings.
The Food Hygiene Rating Act (Northern Ireland) 2016 requires for any food business which supplies consumers with food, which they order by means of an online facility, to ensure that establishment’s food hygiene rating is provided online.
The draft ‘Food Hygiene Rating (Online Display) Regulations (Northern Ireland)’ are currently in development and it is envisaged that a public consultation will be launched in December 2016.
Asked by: David Crausby (Labour - Bolton North East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what estimate he has made of the potential savings which community pharmacies can make to clinical commissioning group budgets.
Answered by David Mowat
One of the aims of the community pharmacy reforms is to encourage much greater use of community pharmacy as a first port of call by fully integrating it with the rest of the National Health Service, so that more people benefit from the skills of pharmacists and their teams – including in general practitioner (GP) practices, urgent care hubs and out of hours services. It will also relieve pressure on other parts of the NHS, by embedding community pharmacy into the urgent care pathway.
The new Pharmacy Integration Fund will drive the greater use of community pharmacy, pharmacists and pharmacy technicians in new, integrated local care models. This will improve access for patients, relieve the pressure on GPs and accident and emergency departments, ensure optimal use of medicines, drive better value, improve patient outcomes, and contribute to delivering a seven day health and care service.
Asked by: David Crausby (Labour - Bolton North East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what the evidential basis is for his Department's proposal on a smaller number of large volume pharmacies reducing costs or improving NHS services.
Answered by David Mowat
The aims of the community pharmacy reforms are to improve the service offered to the public, make better use of pharmacists’ valuable clinical skills, and allocate taxpayers’ money more efficiently. Those reforms do not have a proposal on a smaller number of large volume pharmacies reducing costs or improving NHS services.
Asked by: David Crausby (Labour - Bolton North East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, with reference to the letter of 17 December 2015 from the Director General, Innovation, Growth and Technology, and the Chief Pharmaceutical Officer supporting NHS England, to the Chief Executive of the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee, in which parts of the country there are more pharmacies than are necessary to maintain good access.
Answered by David Mowat
The Government believes efficiencies can be made within community pharmacy without compromising the quality of services or public access to them. Following recent growth in the number of community pharmacies, 40% of pharmacies are now in clusters of three or more. In fact, two-fifths of pharmacies are within 10 minutes’ walk of at least two other pharmacies. As part of the community pharmacy reforms, we are introducing a Pharmacy Access Scheme to support access where pharmacies are sparsely spread and patients depend on them most. We will have a review process to deal with any unforeseen circumstances affecting access; like a road closure. We will also review cases where there may be a high level of deprivation and pharmacies are 0.8 of a mile or more from another pharmacy, if that pharmacy is critical for access.
Asked by: David Crausby (Labour - Bolton North East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many doctors were employed by accident and emergency services in Greater Manchester in each of the last 10 years.
Answered by Philip Dunne
The information is not available in the format requested. Such information as is available is in the following table.
NHS Hospital and Community Health Services (HCHS): HCHS doctors in Emergency Medicine, in NHS trusts in Greater Manchester, by organisation, as at the last day in each specified month, September 2009 to June 2016, full time equivalent
As at last day of month | September 2009 | September 2010 | September 2011 | September 2012 | September 2013 | September 2014 | September 2015 | June 2016 |
All specified organisations | 278 | 332 | 334 | 354 | 350 | 377 | 370 | 378 |
Bolton NHS Foundation Trust | 23 | 35 | 38 | 37 | 32 | 35 | 32 | 36 |
Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust | 54 | 59 | 60 | 72 | 85 | 91 | 80 | 77 |
Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust | 77 | 87 | 89 | 84 | 89 | 86 | 88 | 86 |
Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust | 31 | 36 | 33 | 43 | 44 | 59 | 58 | 63 |
Stockport NHS Foundation Trust | 24 | 27 | 24 | 27 | 23 | 20 | 24 | 26 |
Tameside Hospital NHS Foundation Trust | 16 | 18 | 26 | 28 | 26 | 24 | 25 | 22 |
Trafford Healthcare NHS Trust | 7 | 10 | 10 | - | - | - | - | - |
University Hospital of South Manchester NHS Foundation Trust | 21 | 28 | 28 | 33 | 28 | 38 | 41 | 43 |
Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh NHS Foundation Trust | 25 | 32 | 27 | 30 | 24 | 25 | 22 | 25 |
Source: NHS Digital, Provisional NHS HCHS monthly workforce statistics.
Health and Social Care Information Centre. NHS Digital is the trading name of the Health and Social Care Information Centre.
Notes:
The data shown here are for doctors recorded as having a specialty of Emergency Medicine. Doctors with this specialty do not necessarily work in accident and emergency (A&E) and doctors that work in A&E do not necessarily have this specialty.
It is also known as Accident and Emergency within Workforce Data Standards.
Full time equivalent figures are rounded to the nearest whole number.
Following a public consultation in 2015, categorisation of trusts and staff groups has changed therefore restricting comparability with previous publications.
More details regarding these changes can be found in the outcomes of the consultation document available at the link below:
Data Quality
NHS Digital seeks to minimise inaccuracies and the effect of missing and invalid data but responsibility for data accuracy lies with the organisations providing the data.
Methods are continually being updated to improve data quality. Where changes impact on figures already published, this is assessed but unless it is significant at national level figures are not changed.
Asked by: David Crausby (Labour - Bolton North East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, when the Food Standards Agency will report on the effects of the mandatory display of food hygiene ratings at food outlets in Wales.
Answered by Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
The Food Hygiene Rating (Wales) Act 2013 requires the Food Standards Agency (FSA) to review the implementation and operation of the scheme and produce a report for Welsh Minsters after the first year of the scheme, and then at three yearly intervals thereafter. The first report, which included an assessment of the positive impact of the scheme on compliance, was published on the National Assembly for Wales’ website in February 2015 and is available at:
A further update report was published in May 2015 and is available at:
The FSA is using the evidence from Wales to build a strong case for the mandatory display of ratings at food outlets in England, and is now exploring how a similar statutory scheme could be delivered in England, aligned with our wider regulatory reform approach. The Government will consider this evidence carefully once it is available.
Asked by: David Crausby (Labour - Bolton North East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment his Department has made of safe staffing levels in accident and emergency departments.
Answered by Philip Dunne
Responsibility for staffing rests (as it has always done) with trust boards. Trusts should focus on the numbers and mixture of skills needed to deliver quality care, patient safety and efficiency, taking into account local factors such as acuity and casemix.
Refreshed guidance issued by the National Quality Board in July 2016 on Safe Sustainable Staffing (https://www.england.nhs.uk/ourwork/part-rel/nqb/) set out clearly that trusts must get the balance between quality, safety and efficiency right by neither under-staffing nor over-spending.
Asked by: David Crausby (Labour - Bolton North East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many people in (a) the UK and (b) Bolton have been included in the Bowel Cancer Screening programme for over-60s in each of the last five years.
Answered by Jane Ellison
The NHS Bowel Cancer Screening programme is a biennial programme, in which eligible men and women are invited every two years to be screened.
Roll out of the programme began in 2006 and completed in 2010 offering screening from the ages of 60-69. The Programme then extended the screening age up to 74.
In the last five years, over 19 million men and women have been invited to take part in the NHS Bowel Cancer Screening Programme.
Since the Programmes introduction in 2006, over 24,000 cancers have been detected and over 146,000 patients have been managed for polyps, including polyp removal.
The NHS Bowel Cancer Screening programme will be publishing further data with regards to local areas at a later date.