Asked by: Mike Weatherley (Conservative - Hove)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will bring forward proposals to give GPs greater access to hospital diagnostic tests and specialist tests.
Answered by Dan Poulter
Arrangements are already in place locally to enable general practitioners to have direct access to appropriate tests to support the primary investigation of disease in all areas of diagnostic tests.
A significant proportion of the work undertaken by pathology laboratories and imaging services is associated with direct access from primary care.
Asked by: Mike Weatherley (Conservative - Hove)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he has taken to increase public awareness of symptoms of cancer.
Answered by Jane Ellison
Since early 2011 the Department of Health (Public Health England from 1 April 2013) has been running Be Clear on Cancer campaigns. These are designed to:
- raise the public’s awareness of specific cancer symptoms;
- encourage people with those symptoms to go to the doctor; and
- diagnose cancer at an earlier stage, and therefore make it more treatable, and thereby improve cancer survival rates.
Campaigns that have run nationally include bowel, lung, kidney and bladder (under the common symptom of “blood in pee”), oesophago-gastric, and breast cancer in older women.
Public Health England works closely with the Department and NHS England to ensure that health care professionals are also targeted with campaign information to encourage earlier diagnoses and referrals.
Asked by: Mike Weatherley (Conservative - Hove)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to increase the availability of hospice and end of life care.
Answered by Norman Lamb
NHS England published its Actions for End of Life Care 2014-16 in October 2014 which sets out plans to improve the commissioning and provision of end of life care services nationally, including services commissioned from hospices. This work includes:
- actions to help individuals to be empowered, informed and engaged in decisions about their care;
- actions to support health and care professionals in providing end of life care, including fostering closer partnership working; and
- actions to support local commissioners to commission high quality, personalised end of life care services.
It is for local commissioners to ensure the right services, including end of life care services, are commissioned to meet the needs of their local populations.
Asked by: Mike Weatherley (Conservative - Hove)
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 increase weekend and late night access to GP services.
Answered by Dan Poulter
The Government is committed to improving access to general practitioner (GP) services.
The Prime Minister’s £50 million Challenge Fund is currently improving GP services for millions of patients across England. This includes pilot sites offering evening and weekend appointments, as well as better use of technology.
Last September the Prime Minister announced £100 million to fund a second wave of pilots in 2015/16 and NHS England invited practices to bid for funding. Successful bids are expected to be announced shortly.
Asked by: Mike Weatherley (Conservative - Hove)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what recent assessment he has made of the extent of access on the NHS to new treatments for patients with rarer cancers.
Answered by George Freeman
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence has recommended a number of treatments for rarer cancers. In addition, a number of drugs used in rarer cancers are available through the Cancer Drugs Fund administered by NHS England.
Asked by: Mike Weatherley (Conservative - Hove)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what estimate he has made of the annual cost to the NHS of missed appointments.
Answered by Dan Poulter
Information is not collected centrally on the number of missed general practitioner (GP) appointments. This is a matter for local organisations. However, NHS England estimates that each year around 12 million GP appointments are missed, at a cost to the system of £162 million.
In order to reduce the number of missed GP appointments, the Prime Minister's Challenge Fund is supporting pilots to ensure appointments are as convenient as possible for the patient. The pilots will offer millions more patients evening and weekend GP appointments, as well as introducing initiatives, such as email and Skype consultations.