Asked by: Karin Smyth (Labour - Bristol South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many radiology appointments were delayed due to staff shortages in each of the last 12 months.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The data is not held in the format requested. However, there are record numbers of people working in the National Health Service overall and the NHS has recently published a Long Term Workforce Plan which sets out long term workforce projections. As of September 2023, there are currently almost 17,800 full-time equivalent diagnostic radiographers working in NHS trusts and other core organisations in England. This is over 1,300 or 8.1% more than in 2022 and over 2,600 or 17.4% more than in 2019.
The NHS is prioritising patient safety and will continue to do its best to maintain appointments and elective procedures wherever possible. Cancelled appointments that need to be rescheduled will be done so as a priority.
Asked by: Karin Smyth (Labour - Bristol South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, What discussions she has had with (a) NHS England and (b) Integrated care boards on using Community Diagnostic Centres to reduce health inequalities.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
My Rt hon. Friend, the Secretary of State has regular discussions with NHS England on the progress of the community diagnostic centre (CDC) programme, including how CDCs are delivering against the programme aims, and supporting a reduction in health inequalities.
CDCs aim to enhance diagnostic capacity in underserved communities, with NHS England prioritising their placement in areas identified through health deprivation maps to target and address disparities in life expectancy. Bids for new CDCs went through a thorough approval process assessing local diagnostic capacity, health inequalities, transport links, and cost-effectiveness. Cases were further scrutinised by clinical and diagnostic experts prior to final approval by NHS England.
Funding for CDCs has been allocated so that regions with unmet needs received more funding. This will help to tackle health inequalities by directing funding to areas of need. NHS England is working on a plan to ensure sufficient workforce capacity, including for CDCs, to enable workforce expansion with the right skills and roles, in the right locations and at the right time. This includes reliable recruitment routes to deliver the required uplift in staffing. In 2022/23, this resulted in over 4,300 new starters across the training pipeline for cancer and diagnostics.
There are record numbers of people working in the National Health Service overall, and the NHS has recently published a Long Term Workforce Plan which sets out long term workforce projections. The Government has backed the plan with over £2.4 billion to fund additional education and training places over five years.
Asked by: Karin Smyth (Labour - Bristol South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of staffing levels in Community Diagnostic Centres.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
My Rt hon. Friend, the Secretary of State has regular discussions with NHS England on the progress of the community diagnostic centre (CDC) programme, including how CDCs are delivering against the programme aims, and supporting a reduction in health inequalities.
CDCs aim to enhance diagnostic capacity in underserved communities, with NHS England prioritising their placement in areas identified through health deprivation maps to target and address disparities in life expectancy. Bids for new CDCs went through a thorough approval process assessing local diagnostic capacity, health inequalities, transport links, and cost-effectiveness. Cases were further scrutinised by clinical and diagnostic experts prior to final approval by NHS England.
Funding for CDCs has been allocated so that regions with unmet needs received more funding. This will help to tackle health inequalities by directing funding to areas of need. NHS England is working on a plan to ensure sufficient workforce capacity, including for CDCs, to enable workforce expansion with the right skills and roles, in the right locations and at the right time. This includes reliable recruitment routes to deliver the required uplift in staffing. In 2022/23, this resulted in over 4,300 new starters across the training pipeline for cancer and diagnostics.
There are record numbers of people working in the National Health Service overall, and the NHS has recently published a Long Term Workforce Plan which sets out long term workforce projections. The Government has backed the plan with over £2.4 billion to fund additional education and training places over five years.
Asked by: Karin Smyth (Labour - Bristol South)
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 estimate of the number of diagnostic tests that were carried out at community diagnostic centres since October 2021.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
As of November 2023, community diagnostic centres have delivered 6,044,048 additional diagnostic tests since October 2021.
Asked by: Karin Smyth (Labour - Bristol South)
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 increase the number of radiologists in cancer centres.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
As of October 2023, there are currently over 5,600 full time equivalent doctors working in the speciality of clinical radiology, within National Health Service trusts and other core organisations in England. This is over 300 or 5.7% more than in 2023, over 1,000 or 22% more than in 2019, and over 2,200 or 66.8% more than in 2010.
The NHS Long Term Workforce Plan (LTWP) published by NHS England on 30 June 2023 sets out an aim to double the number of medical school places in England to 15,000 places a year by 2031/32, and to work towards this expansion by increasing places by a third, to 10,000 a year by 2028/29. The LTWP has committed to an adequate growth in foundation placement capacity, as those taking up these new places begin to graduate, and to a commensurate increase in specialty training places that meets the demands of the NHS in the future. This will substantially increase the potential pipeline for the radiologist workforce.
Asked by: Karin Smyth (Labour - Bristol South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to her Department's press release entitled Digital pathology to improve cancer screening and save lives, published on 5 January 2024, what additional training will be given to pathologists working to enable the quick uptake of new technology.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Following the recommendation from the UK National Screening Committee to support the use of digital pathology in the National Health Service cervical, breast and bowel cancer screening programmes, NHS England are investing in and working with the Royal College of Pathologists in the on-going development of an online Pathology Portal.
This digital learning platform will support trainees and established pathology practitioners in digital pathology to ensure that digital learning materials are available to the multi-professional workforce.
NHS England plans to issue guidance at the end of January 2024 for the three NHS Cancer Screening Programmes, to support local providers of histopathology services who wish to implement digital pathology for the reporting of screening cases.
Asked by: Karin Smyth (Labour - Bristol 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 prescriptions were written by pharmacists in the financial year 2022-23.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The National Health Service does not currently commission prescribing services from community pharmacists but pharmacists working in other NHS settings, including general practices, can prescribe on the NHS.
The following table shows the total number of items prescribed in England and the number of items prescribed by pharmacists in 2022:
Year | Total items prescribed in England | Items prescribed by pharmacists | Percentage of total items prescribed by pharmacists |
2022 | 1,162,723,444 | 40,701,768 | 3.50 |
Source: NHS Business Services Authority
We are working on increasing the number of pharmacist prescribers and from 2026 all newly graduated pharmacists will have a prescribing qualification. This year NHS England will pilot how NHS prescribing could work in community pharmacy. Pharmacists in other setting including general practice and hospital already prescribe.
Asked by: Karin Smyth (Labour - Bristol 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 repeat prescriptions were ordered through the NHS app in each of the last 12 months.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
There are currently over 33.6 million sign-ups on the NHS App, enabling users to access a range of services within the National Health Service, such as booking and managing general practice (GP) and hospital appointments, ordering repeat prescriptions and viewing their prospective GP health record.
We estimate that the NHS App share of electronic repeat prescriptions only is 10.5%, up from approximately 7% in December 2022. The following table shows the total number of repeat prescriptions ordered via the NHS App in each of the last 12 months:
Date | Repeat Prescription Orders via NHS App |
December 2022 | 2.2 million |
January 2023 | 2.4 million |
February 2023 | 2.2 million |
March 2023 | 2.5 million |
April 2023 | 2.4 million |
May 2023 | 2.7 million |
June 2023 | 2.7 million |
July 2023 | 2.8 million |
August 2023 | 2.9 million |
September 2023 | 2.8 million |
October 2023 | 3.1 million |
November 2023 | 3.2 million |
Asked by: Karin Smyth (Labour - Bristol South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the NHS's press release New plan to make it easier for patients to see their GP, published on 8 May 2023, what progress her Department has made on the allocation of £240 million of funding for the purchase of technology in general practice.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
This funding was announced as part of the Delivery Plan for Recovering Access to Primary Care. For a practice on analogue telephony that implements Modern General Practice Access, it provides an average of £60,000 to support the move to digital telephony, enhanced digital tools, and transition support over the next two years. This will enable a more streamlined and integrated digital access pathway for patients, covering online consultation, messaging and appointment booking.
NHS England is aiding practices in transitioning from analogue to digital services, resulting in 83% of practices now using a digital telephony solution. Support provided by integrated care systems is helping practices buy and implement better digital tools now, and a new framework launching early next year will simplify the buying process and experience for practices and ensure continuous improvement of tools as their needs evolve.
Asked by: Karin Smyth (Labour - Bristol South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many unique monthly visitors to the NHS app there were in each of the last 24 months.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
People log in to the NHS App, on average, over three times per month. The following table shows the total number of unique logins per month since December 2021:
Date | Unique Logins |
December 2021 | 16,610,432 |
January 2022 | 13,187,918 |
February 2022 | 10,332,559 |
March 2022 | 9,877,323 |
April 2022 | 9,548,551 |
May 2022 | 9,594,960 |
June 2022 | 8,739,815 |
July 2022 | 8,411,086 |
August 2022 | 7,430,167 |
September 2022 | 7,536,110 |
October 2022 | 7,795,626 |
November 2022 | 6,349,130 |
December 2022 | 5,701,081 |
January 2023 | 6,090,851 |
February 2022 | 5,683,030 |
March 2023 | 6,136,135 |
April 2023 | 6,137,161 |
May 2023 | 6,136,593 |
June 2023 | 5,768,438 |
July 2023 | 5,806,493 |
August 2023 | 6,012,745 |
September 2023 | 6,937,178 |
October 2023 | 7,843,134 |
November 2023 | 7,289,280 |