Asked by: Karen Lumley (Conservative - Redditch)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what average home-to-hospital journey time his Department uses as its benchmark for acceptable travelling time for patients using (a) accident and emergency and (b) maternity services.
Answered by Philip Dunne
There is no central guidance on average home-to-hospital journey times for accident and emergency or maternity services. The redesign and delivery of front-line health services is a matter for the local National Health Service – clinically led by front-line NHS organisations and clinicians who are closest to the needs of their communities.
The NHS is developing ambulance services that act as mobile assessment and treatment services and a networked approach to urgent and emergency care services to ensure patients are treated in the facility best equipped to provide whatever care is needed. For some patients requiring specialist care this may be in a hospital that is further away. NHS England has also asked Local Maternity Systems to develop plans that ensure women receive the maternity care that they want and need including, where women choose it, care in the community as close to home as possible.
Asked by: Karen Lumley (Conservative - Redditch)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what recent steps his Department has taken to ensure patients attend (a) GP and (b) acute services appointments.
Answered by David Mowat
With regard to general practice, NHS England is promoting the use of online booking and cancellation of appointments. Evidence shows that patients are more likely to cancel an appointment which is no longer needed, if the appointment was booked online. Furthermore, some general practitioner (GP) surgeries display information about lost clinic time potentially resulting from cancelled appointments which cannot be re-filled or from patients not attending appointments without any prior notification. The Department does not collect information on the number of missed and cancelled GP appointments.
With regard to acute services, the NHS Constitution emphasises patients’ responsibilities to the National Health Service, including that they “should keep appointments, or cancel within reasonable time”. It is the responsibility of NHS organisations locally to plan for and take action to minimise the number of patients who fail to attend their appointments, for example, by reminding patients of their forthcoming appointments through the use of text message reminder systems. NHS England publishes quarterly data on hospital outpatient appointments. The proportion of hospital outpatient appointments that patients did not attend has fallen from 10.6% in 2008-09 to 8.9% in 2015-16.
Asked by: Karen Lumley (Conservative - Redditch)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many GP practices in England have access to a mental health worker to support patients.
Answered by David Mowat
This information is not held centrally.
The General Practice Forward View, published in April 2016, announced a commitment to 5,000 doctors in general practice and a minimum of 5,000 other staff working in general practice by 2020-21. This will include investment in an extra 3,000 mental health therapists to work in primary care by 2020 to support localities to expand the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies programme. This amounts to an average of a full time therapist for every 2-3 typical sized GP practices.
Asked by: Karen Lumley (Conservative - Redditch)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many GPs in England are trained mental health specialists.
Answered by Philip Dunne
This information is not collected by the Department.
Asked by: Karen Lumley (Conservative - Redditch)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will review the effectiveness of the individual funding request process for cancer medicines.
Answered by George Freeman
Individual funding requests for cancer medicines are dealt with through the individual Cancer Drugs Fund request process.
NHS England has operational responsibility for the Cancer Drugs Fund (CDF) and has advised that it follows a standard operating procedure when responding to individual requests to fund cancer treatments. This requires a response to the request within 10 working days following receipt of a complete submission from the clinician.
NHS England’s CDF Standard Operating Procedures document is kept under review and is available at:
www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/sop-cdf-1114.pdf
Asked by: Karen Lumley (Conservative - Redditch)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many (a) applications to the Cancer Drugs Fund and (b) individual funding requests for cancer medicines were approved in (i) 2010-11, (ii) 2011-12, (iii) 2012-13 and (iv) 2013-14.
Answered by George Freeman
Information on the number of applications to the Cancer Drugs Fund (CDF) in 2010-11, 2011-12 and 2012-13 is not held centrally and information on Individual Funding Requests to primary care trusts for cancer medicines was not collected centrally during this period.
NHS England has had oversight of the Fund since April 2013 and publishes information on patient numbers funded through the national CDF list and through individual Cancer Drugs Fund requests (ICDFRs) routinely on its website at:
www.england.nhs.uk/ourwork/pe/cdf/
Information on the number of patients1 accessing the Fund in these years is shown below:
| Number of patients funded in 2010-112 | Number of patients funded in | Number of patients funded in | Number of patients funded in | Number of patients funded in |
England | 2,780 | 11,798 | 15,456 | 19,560 | 11,308 |
1 Some individual patients may be double-counted where a patient has received more than one drug treatment through the CDF
2 Source: Information provided to the Department by strategic health authorities
3 Source: NHS England
4 To end September 2014
Asked by: Karen Lumley (Conservative - Redditch)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment his Department has made of the confidence of the general public in using an automated external defibrillator in an emergency.
Answered by Jane Ellison
The Cardiovascular Disease Outcomes Strategy, published by the Department of Health in March 2013, identified the need for improved training of the public in basic resuscitation skills and use of automatic external defibrillators (AEDs). Professor Huon Gray, the National Clinical Director for heart disease in NHS England, has been working with the Resuscitation Council UK (RCUK), the British Heart Foundation (BHF), Public Health England, and Ambulance Services on how to improve local knowledge and information about the locations of AEDs and break down resistance to their use amongst the public out of misguided fear of facing personal or corporate liabilities.
Also, in guidance that the Department for Education has recently issued to schools about children with medical conditions, it has encouraged the teaching of resuscitation skills and purchase of defibrillators. This has been supported by NHS England, the Department of Health, the BHF and RCUK. The guidance can be found at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/supporting-pupils-at-school-with-medical-conditions--3
Asked by: Karen Lumley (Conservative - Redditch)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what research has been undertaken by his Department into the effect that an individual's knowledge of cardiopulmonary resuscitation has on their (a) confidence and (b) efficacy in using an automated emergency defibrillator.
Answered by Jane Ellison
The Department has not funded research into the effect that an individual's knowledge of cardiopulmonary resuscitation has on their confidence and efficacy in using an automated external defibrillator. However, Professor Gray, the National Clinical Director for heart disease in NHS England, contributed to a study, the findings of which were published last year, which suggested that improving public confidence in using public access defibrillators was probably a factor in the successful deployment of these devices. The article can be found at:
http://heart.bmj.com/content/100/8/619.full?sid=eeec7a42-ee93-4458-b5cc-ec29680245a3
Asked by: Karen Lumley (Conservative - Redditch)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment his Department has made of the adequacy of the instructions provided with automated external defibrillators; and what assessment he has made of the ability of an untrained individual to use such defibrillators effectively on the basis of those instructions alone.
Answered by George Freeman
The Medical Devices Directive states that where a device bears instructions required for its operation such information must be understandable and appropriate for the intended user. As far as practicable and appropriate, the information needed to use the device safely must be set out on the device itself and/or on the packaging for each unit or, where appropriate, on the sales packaging.
Furthermore, regarding post market surveillance the manufacturer must undertake to institute and keep up to date a systematic procedure to review experience gained from devices once in use. This includes an obligation for the manufacturer to notify the competent authorities (the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) for the UK) immediately of any adverse incidents or problems with the device which have led or might have led to serious health issues or the death of a patient or user. This would include issues with labelling or the Instructions for Use.
A search of the MHRA Adverse Incident database found 534 entries related to defibrillators since 1 January 2012 to the present. Of those, six concern issues related to the Instructions for Use. All of those six concern defibrillators intended for use by professional users and not automatic external defibrillators for use by the public.