Asked by: Jim Cunningham (Labour - Coventry South)
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 9 September to Question 286636 on HIV infection, what steps he is taking to reduce the number of people diagnosed with HIV at a late stage of infection.
Answered by Jo Churchill
Public Health England (PHE) commissions HIV Prevention England programme and one of its objectives is to increase HIV testing to reduce undiagnosed infection and late diagnoses. PHE, in partnership with local authorities commissions the National HIV Self-Sampling Service providing an online HIV testing service. Since 2015 nearly 90,000 people have used the service.
PHE published key messages for healthcare professionals in the 2018 HIV in the United Kingdom report outlining measures to increase HIV testing and reduce undiagnosed infection, these complement other national guidelines. PHE also provides late HIV diagnosis data to local authorities to monitor local patterns and take action.
Asked by: Jim Cunningham (Labour - Coventry South)
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 all mental health units provide their vulnerable patients with a good level of care.
Answered by Nadine Dorries
Everybody has the right to receive safe, high-quality care. If care has fallen short of this, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) can use its powers to take action against those responsible.
The CQC has a key responsibility in the overall assurance of safety and quality of health and adult social care services in England. The latest annual State of Care report, published in October 2018, found that the majority of National Health Service mental health trusts and independent providers were continuing to provide good quality care.
We are working with the CQC to look at ways in which we can improve the way we hold large independent sector mental health providers with complex structures to account for quality and safety.
Asked by: Jim Cunningham (Labour - Coventry South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent estimate he has made of the average waiting time for an appointment to see a GP in (a) England and Wales and (b) Coventry.
Answered by Jo Churchill
The most recent data on the time between booking an appointment with a general practice and having the appointment (in days) for Coventry and Rugby Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) as well as for England are presented in the following table as the average over the 12 months from August 2018 to July 2019.
The data is taken from the NHS Digital publication ‘Appointments in General Practice’. This is a new experimental data collection which is still being refined and improved.
It should be noted that the ‘time from booking to appointment’ refers only to the time elapsed between the successful booking of an appointment and the appointment actually taking place. The data does not take into consideration that many patients will be appropriately booking ahead as part of the continuity of care they receive for long-term conditions.
| Coventry and Rugby CCG | England |
| Distribution of average time elapsed between booking an appointment and the appointment taking place, August 2018 to July 2019 | |
Same Day | 47% | 42% |
1 Day | 7% | 7% |
2 to 7 Days | 21% | 20% |
8 to 14 Days | 12% | 14% |
15 to 21 Days | 6% | 8% |
22 or more | 7% | 10% |
Total | 100.0% | 100.0% |
Notes:
Asked by: Jim Cunningham (Labour - Coventry South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of trends of the number of trainee GPs in each of the last ten years.
Answered by Jo Churchill
The Department’s assessment is that the number of general practitioner (GP) trainees in England has been increasing over the last 10 years. Data on the number of doctors in general practice speciality training is only available for the past eight years, including 2019, and is provided in the attached table. Data on the number of doctors entering GP training for each of the previous 10 years is also provided in the attached table.
Asked by: Jim Cunningham (Labour - Coventry South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of the trends of the number of GPs (a) retiring and (b) leaving the profession in each of the last ten years.
Answered by Jo Churchill
The Department is unable to make an assessment on the trends in the number of general practitioners (GPs) retiring in each of the last 10 years.
The data in the following table shows the headcount and full-time equivalent for the number of GPs who joined or left the workforce between the beginning and the end of the specified period in 2015-16, 2016-17 and 2017-18, as reported by GP practices in England to NHS Digital. The numbers exclude Registrars, Locums and GPs transferring between practices. This data should be treated with caution as it is incomplete. Data on the number of GPs leaving the profession is only available from September 2015.
NHS Digital define a workforce joiner as a GP who was recorded as working in a practice at the end of the specified time period, but not at its beginning. A workforce leaver is defined as a GP who was recorded as working in a GP practice at the beginning but not at the end of the specified time period. The number of leavers includes GPs who retired as well as those who left general practice for other reasons, such as to join a National Health Service organisation (non-GP practice).
The recording of leavers and joiners depends on accurate recording by the employing practice of a GP’s General Medical Council (GMC) number. Hence the data should be treated with caution, because a GP could be incorrectly recorded as joining or leaving the workforce if they move between practices and their GMC number is not correctly recorded by one or both practices.
The figures are experimental statistics and are based only on a cohort of GP practices that were open at both the beginning and end of the specified time period and supplied GMC Numbers for 100% of their relevant GP staff.
| Number of GP practices supplying data | Full-Time-Equivalent | Headcount | ||
Joiners | Leavers | Joiners | Leavers | ||
September 2015 to September 2016 | 5,663 practices (74.9% of all practices) | 1,708 | 1,793 | 2,393 | 2,473 |
September 2016 to September 2017 | 6,323 practices (86.0% of all practices) | 1,441 | 1,535 | 2,103 | 2,080 |
September 2017 to September 2018 | 5,914 practices (82.9% of all practices) | 1,397 | 1,521 | 2,120 | 2,111 |
Source: NHS Digital General Practice Workforce, Final 31 March 2019, experimental statistics
Note:
Full time equivalent (FTE) refers to the proportion of full time contracted hours that the post holder is contracted to work. 1 would indicate they work a full set of hours (37.5), 0.5 that they worked half time. In Registrars' contracts 1 FTE = 40 hours. To ensure consistency, these FTEs have been converted to the standard wMDS measure of 1 FTE = 37.5 hours in the table.
Asked by: Jim Cunningham (Labour - Coventry South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of the proportion of people diagnosed with HIV at a late stage of infection.
Answered by Jo Churchill
Public Health England routinely collects data on people newly diagnosed with HIV in the United Kingdom. In 2018, 43% (1,480/3,465) of people newly diagnosed with HIV were diagnosed at a late stage of infection. The proportion of people diagnosed late has declined steadily over the last decade, since 2009 when 52% (2,875/5,553) of people were diagnosed at a late stage of infection. This data can be viewed at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/hiv-annual-data-tables
Asked by: Jim Cunningham (Labour - Coventry South)
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 widen access to the drug PrEP.
Answered by Jo Churchill
Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is currently funded through the three-year PrEP Impact Trial. Following my Rt. hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care’s announcement on 30 January that the number of places on the trial would be doubled to 26,000, expansion of the Trial is now underway across the country. A core function of the PrEP Impact Trial Community Advisory Board (CAB) is to raise awareness and uptake of PrEP in key populations including black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) communities. Further information about PrEP Impact Trial CAB activities and participating community groups can be found at the following links:
https://www.prepimpacttrial.org.uk/faqs
In addition, Public Health England’s Innovation Fund has supported a number of community based projects aimed at increasing PrEP awareness in women, BAME groups and trans communities. Information on the projects funded in 2018 can be found at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/innovative-hiv-prevention-projects-reached-170000-people-in-2018
Asked by: Jim Cunningham (Labour - Coventry South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many and what proportion of women with a disability have attended cervical cancer screening through the NHS in the last period for which information is available.
Answered by Jo Churchill
It has not proved possible to respond to the hon. Member in the time available before Prorogation.
Asked by: Jim Cunningham (Labour - Coventry South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the quality of care provided to people with Alzheimer's in NHS hospitals.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
We remain committed to delivering the Challenge on Dementia 2020 in full to make England the best country in the world for dementia care.
The National Audit of Dementia Care in General Hospitals 2018–2019 published in July 2019 and undertaken on behalf of NHS England and NHS Improvement and the Welsh Government, shows that improvements have continued in the care of people with dementia in hospitals across England and Wales since the previous audit of 2017. For example, 96% of hospitals in England and Wales now have a system in place for more flexible family visiting and a large number (88%) of carers (and/or patients) receive a copy of the discharge plan.
The report is available at the following link:
Asked by: Jim Cunningham (Labour - Coventry South)
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 increase uptake of NHS hearing services.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
Clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) together with their local providers are responsible to ensure there are clearly defined referral arrangements in place to facilitate timely access to regular and specialist services when required. The Commissioning Framework for Hearing Loss is guidance for organisations responsible for planning and commissioning local hearing services for deaf people, published in 2016 by NHS England. The Framework offers guidance and models of care that commissioners may utilise to support local needs.
The Action Plan on Hearing Loss, published in March 2015, was developed with input from the Department of Health and Social Care, NHS England, Public Health England, other Government Departments, key stakeholders across the voluntary, professional and private sectors and people with hearing loss. The aim of the Plan is to deliver improved hearing outcomes and support for individuals, and it sets out key objectives including improving prevention, early diagnosis, maximising independence, and enabling people to take part in everyday activities, like going to work.
In July 2019, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence published a quality standard for adult-onset hearing loss. This will support CCGs to improve the commissioning of services.