Asked by: Michael Dugher (Labour - Barnsley East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will make an assessment of the effect of the budget reduction for community pharmacy in 2016-17 on high street vacancy rates.
Answered by Alistair Burt
Community pharmacy is a vital part of the National Health Service and can play an even greater role. In the Spending Review, the Government re-affirmed the need for the NHS to deliver £22 billion in efficiency savings by 2020/21 as set out in the NHS’s own plan, the Five Year Forward View. Community pharmacy is a core part of NHS primary care and has an important contribution to make as the NHS rises to these challenges. The Government believes efficiencies can be made without compromising the quality of services or public access to them. Our aim is to ensure that those community pharmacies upon which people depend continue to thrive and so we are consulting on the introduction of a Pharmacy Access Scheme, which will provide more NHS funds to certain pharmacies compared to others, considering factors such as location and the health needs of the local population.
The Government’s vision is for a more efficient, modern system that will free up pharmacists to spend more time delivering clinical and public health services to the benefit of patients and the public. Our proposals are about improving services for patients and the public and securing efficiencies and savings. A consequence may be the closure of some pharmacies but that is not our aim. We are not able to assess which pharmacies may close or what the effect on high street vacancy rates might be because we do not know the financial viability of individual businesses or the extent to which they derive income from services commissioned locally by the NHS or local authorities or have non-NHS related income.
We are consulting the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee (PSNC) and others, including patient and public representatives, on our proposals for community pharmacy in 2016/17 and beyond. We announced on 16 March 2016 that the consultation period was to be extended to allow more time to develop the proposed changes with the PSNC and others. It will now close on 24 May 2016.
Asked by: Michael Dugher (Labour - Barnsley East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what the average hospital waiting time was for NHS patients in (a) Barnsley East constituency, (b) Barnsley, (c) South Yorkshire and (d) Yorkshire and the Humber since 2010.
Answered by Jane Ellison
The table attached shows average median waiting times in weeks to start consultant-led elective treatment for National Health Service commissioning organisations and regions which most closely match those requested.
Asked by: Michael Dugher (Labour - Barnsley East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what meetings (a) Ministers and (b) officials of his Department have had with representatives of the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee since May 2015.
Answered by Alistair Burt
Ministers and officials in the Department meet with representatives of the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee (PSNC) on a regular basis to discuss issues such as drug reimbursement, remuneration and service developments and amendments to legislation. We have been in discussions with the PSNC since December 2015 regarding the Government’s proposals for community pharmacy in 2016/17 and beyond.
Asked by: Michael Dugher (Labour - Barnsley 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 ability of ambulance trusts to meet targets for (a) Red 1 and (b) Red 2 category emergency callouts.
Answered by Jane Ellison
The ambulance service is facing unprecedented demand. With December 2015 recording the highest number of Category A calls (Red 1 and Red 2) resulting in an ambulance arriving at the scene.
In the light of this demand, the Secretary of State authorised NHS England to explore whether changes to the way that the ambulance service responds to calls could help improve patient outcomes. The results of this work will be known in the summer.
In the longer term, NHS England’s Urgent and Emergency Care Review will aim to tackle the root causes of the increasing demand by considering whole system change to the delivery of urgent and emergency care, including new models of delivery of care for ambulance services.
Information on the performance of ambulance trusts in respect of the Red 1 and Red 2 national ambulance response times is published on a monthly basis by NHS England and is available at the following link:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/ambulance-quality-indicators/
This shows that 2015/16 year to date performance for Red 1 has improved compared to the same period last year, and Red 2 performance is also progressing towards the national ambulance response time targets.