Asked by: Emma Hardy (Labour - Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle)
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 31 July to Question HL9573 in the House of Lords on NHS: Drugs, what assessment the has made of the adequacy of the (a) complaints system, (b) performance and (c) safety of homecare medicines services.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
While no assessment has been made by the Department, the House of Lords Public Services Select Committee published its report on Homecare Medicines Services on 16 November 2023. NHS England has also been carrying out a desktop exercise to review homecare medicines services. The next steps are to bring together data from the desktop exercise with the House of Lords inquiry report recommendations to shape a programme of work on homecare medicines. The Department is carefully considering all the conclusions and recommendations made in the report and will respond in due course.
Asked by: Emma Hardy (Labour - Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will make it her Department’s policy to include long-term conditions such as Parkinson’s on the list of exempted conditions for prescription charges in England.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
While the Government’s policy remains that there are no plans to review the list of medical conditions that entitle someone to apply for a medical exemption certificate, there are extensive arrangements currently in place in England to ensure that prescriptions are affordable for everyone. Approximately 89% of prescriptions are dispensed free of charge and extensive arrangements are already in place to help those with the greatest need. Eligibility depends on the patient’s age, whether they are in qualifying full-time education, whether they are pregnant or have recently given birth, or whether they are in receipt of certain benefits or a war pension.
Asked by: Emma Hardy (Labour - Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will review the list of conditions on the exemptions list for prescription charges.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
While the Government’s policy remains that there are no plans to review the list of medical conditions that entitle someone to apply for a medical exemption certificate, there are extensive arrangements currently in place in England to ensure that prescriptions are affordable for everyone. Approximately 89% of prescriptions are dispensed free of charge and extensive arrangements are already in place to help those with the greatest need. Eligibility depends on the patient’s age, whether they are in qualifying full-time education, whether they are pregnant or have recently given birth, or whether they are in receipt of certain benefits or a war pension.
Asked by: Emma Hardy (Labour - Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle)
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 26 June 2023 to Question 189330 on NHS: Drugs, how many and what proportion of complaints about homecare medicines services were (a) opened and (b) upheld in each of the last three years.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Data on complaints open and upheld is collected by contracting authorities as part of the monthly key performance indicators (KPIs) they receive. Homecare providers also present this data to the National Homecare Medicines committee Supplier Engagement Sub-group during supplier engagement meetings. The data is not currently aggregated into a national figure. Work underway on KPI reporting means that such data is expected to be available from 2024.
Asked by: Emma Hardy (Labour - Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will make it her policy to freeze prescription charges for 2024-25.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
No decision has been made on whether to make any changes to prescription charges for 2024/2025. In England, there are extensive arrangements currently in place to ensure that prescriptions are affordable for everyone. Around 89% of prescriptions are dispensed free of charge and extensive arrangements are already in place to help those with the greatest need. Eligibility depends on the patient’s age, whether they are in qualifying full-time education, whether they are pregnant or have recently given birth, or whether they are in receipt of certain benefits or a war pension.
Asked by: Emma Hardy (Labour - Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether she plans to implement the recommendations in the report Continuing to pay the price: the impact of prescription charges on people with long-term conditions, published by the Prescription Charges Coalition in March 2023.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
No decision has been made on whether to make any changes to prescription charges for 2024/2025. Responsibility for prescribing, including the duration of prescriptions, rests with the doctor who has clinical responsibility for that aspect of a patient's care. The Department has no plans to give prescribers directives on this. It also has no plans to conduct such a review of the list of conditions that entitle a patient to apply for a medical exemption certificate.
This Government is committed to tackling cost of living pressures; and has decided that the prescription charge upper age exemption will remain at 60, meaning that it will not change to align to State Pension Age. The decision was published in June 2023, and more information is available at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/free-prescription-age-frozen-at-60
Information on the prescription exemptions is promoted to professionals and patients to ensure they are aware of a patient’s entitlement. The NHS Business Services Authority also undertakes activities such as continuous social media promotion, paid social media advertising, provision of online resources for healthcare professionals to download and use in general practitioner surgeries and pharmacies, for example, posters and leaflets, media releases to news titles and promotion through healthcare bulletins.
Asked by: Emma Hardy (Labour - Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of implementing each of the recommendations in the report by Parkinson’s UK entitled Every minute counts: Time critical Parkinson’s medication on time, every time, published in September 2023.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Within secondary care, hospital providers are responsible for ensuring that patients within hospital settings, including those with Parkinson’s disease, receive the appropriate medication on time.
NHS England has published a RightCare toolkit which aims to address challenges in providing services for those with progressive neurological conditions, including Parkinson’s disease. The toolkit provides advice on medicine optimisation, highlighting the importance of timely administration of specific drugs, such as Levodopa, in acute and community health settings.
Asked by: Emma Hardy (Labour - Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to help ensure that people with Parkinson’s receive their medication on time in hospitals.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Within secondary care, hospital providers are responsible for ensuring that patients within hospital settings, including those with Parkinson’s disease, receive the appropriate medication on time.
NHS England has published a RightCare toolkit which aims to address challenges in providing services for those with progressive neurological conditions, including Parkinson’s disease. The toolkit provides advice on medicine optimisation, highlighting the importance of timely administration of specific drugs, such as Levodopa, in acute and community health settings.
Asked by: Emma Hardy (Labour - Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps she is taking to ensure the programme of work on accessible information is (a) adequately resourced and (b) prioritised in NHS England.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
National Health Service organisations and publicly funded social care providers must comply with the Accessible Information Standard (AIS) to meet the communication needs of patients and carers with a disability, impairment or sensory loss. NHS England has completed a review of the AIS to help ensure that everyone’s communication needs are met in health and care provision. The review considered the effectiveness of the current AIS, how the standard is implemented and enforced in practice, and identified recommendations for improvement.
Following publication of the revised standard, NHS England will continue work to support its implementation with awareness raising, communication and engagement and updated e-learning modules on the AIS to ensure NHS staff are better aware of the standard and their roles and responsibilities in implementing it. The e-learning modules are accessible to everyone working in the NHS and adult social care services.
NHS England are responsible for the review of the AIS and publication and have sufficient resource for this. The implementation of the AIS will mostly take place at a local level and it will be for local systems to determine what resource is necessary.
A key part of the AIS review is the strengthening of assurance of compliance with implementation of the AIS. As such, an AIS self-assessment framework has been developed to support providers of NHS and social care services to measure their performance against the AIS and develop improvement action plans to address gaps in implementation. The self-assessment framework has also been designed to help the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to firstly gain insight into people's experiences and whether their accessible communication needs are being met and secondly help CQC better understand organisational performance and to include that in the CQC assessment framework for provider organisations.
For social care providers, a new duty on CQC to assess local authorities’ delivery of their Care Act 2014 duties went live on 1 April 2023, and as part of these assessments, under the theme of ‘Working With People’, CQC will consider to what extent local authorities ensure people in the area have access to the advocacy, information and advice they need to make informed decisions about how to meet their care and/or support needs.
Asked by: Emma Hardy (Labour - Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps she is taking to support the implementation of accessible information in (a) NHS England and (b) social care services.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
National Health Service organisations and publicly funded social care providers must comply with the Accessible Information Standard (AIS) to meet the communication needs of patients and carers with a disability, impairment or sensory loss. NHS England has completed a review of the AIS to help ensure that everyone’s communication needs are met in health and care provision. The review considered the effectiveness of the current AIS, how the standard is implemented and enforced in practice, and identified recommendations for improvement.
Following publication of the revised standard, NHS England will continue work to support its implementation with awareness raising, communication and engagement and updated e-learning modules on the AIS to ensure NHS staff are better aware of the standard and their roles and responsibilities in implementing it. The e-learning modules are accessible to everyone working in the NHS and adult social care services.
NHS England are responsible for the review of the AIS and publication and have sufficient resource for this. The implementation of the AIS will mostly take place at a local level and it will be for local systems to determine what resource is necessary.
A key part of the AIS review is the strengthening of assurance of compliance with implementation of the AIS. As such, an AIS self-assessment framework has been developed to support providers of NHS and social care services to measure their performance against the AIS and develop improvement action plans to address gaps in implementation. The self-assessment framework has also been designed to help the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to firstly gain insight into people's experiences and whether their accessible communication needs are being met and secondly help CQC better understand organisational performance and to include that in the CQC assessment framework for provider organisations.
For social care providers, a new duty on CQC to assess local authorities’ delivery of their Care Act 2014 duties went live on 1 April 2023, and as part of these assessments, under the theme of ‘Working With People’, CQC will consider to what extent local authorities ensure people in the area have access to the advocacy, information and advice they need to make informed decisions about how to meet their care and/or support needs.