Asked by: Paul Blomfield (Labour - Sheffield Central)
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 8 June 2023 to Question 187216, what proportion of NHS Bank Staff will receive a non-consolidated payment.
Answered by Will Quince
The information requested is not held centrally. Bank staff are employed on locally managed contracts, the terms of which differ by individual trust. It is therefore not possible to determine how many will be eligible to receive the non-consolidated payments.
Asked by: Paul Blomfield (Labour - Sheffield Central)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent steps his Department has taken to improve diagnosis times for those affected by brain tumours.
Answered by Helen Whately - Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
The Department has taken steps to significantly invest in diagnostics through additional funding for Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and Computed Tomography capacity across all National Health Service healthcare settings over this Spending Review period. This includes the acceleration of the Community Diagnostic Centres programme which will further release imaging capacity to reduce the waiting times for all patients including patients with clinical indication of a brain tumour. There has also been investment in MRI Acceleration technology which will improve the daily throughput per upgraded MRI scanner by reducing the scan times required per patient and improve the patient experience by reducing the scan times for patients.
Improvements to GP Direct Access pathways will support general practitioners referring directly for MRI brain scans, where they have concerns about symptoms that could indicate an incidental finding of a brain tumour. In addition, all patients referred for an imaging diagnostic scan with the clinical indication of cancer/tumour would be treated as an urgent cancer referral. These referrals are triaged, appointed and reported within two weeks of referral.
Asked by: Paul Blomfield (Labour - Sheffield Central)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to raise public awareness of the signs and symptoms of brain tumours.
Answered by Helen Whately - Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
NHS England is delivering a range of interventions to support general practitioners (GPs) in diagnosing brain cancer earlier, therefore the Department is not running any additional public awareness campaigns at this stage.
In April 2020, NHS England introduced the “early cancer diagnosis service specification” for Primary Care Networks. This is designed to support improvements in rates of early cancer diagnosis by requiring Primary Care Networks to review the quality of their practices’ referrals for suspected cancer and take steps to improve this.
NHS England is also working with Cancer Alliances and GPs to diagnose more cancers earlier by making funding available to embed clinical decision support tools within general practice and give them access to a wider range of diagnostic tests. This includes brain MRIs, for patients with concerning symptoms, but who fall outside the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guideline threshold for an urgent suspected cancer referral. These tools and tests are expected to support the earlier detection of a range of cancers including brain cancer.
Asked by: Paul Blomfield (Labour - Sheffield Central)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if his Department will make an assessment of the potential merits of publishing (a) dentistry and (b) other oral health statistics more frequently for the purpose of (i) analysing oral health and (ii) identifying appropriate interventions.
Answered by James Morris
There are no plans to make such an assessment. In England, local authorities are responsible for assessing oral health needs, developing strategies and commissioning oral health improvement programmes for the local population. Dental and other oral health statistics can be used to assess such needs and the Department has published resources to support local authorities with commissioning evidence based oral health improvement programmes.
Asked by: Paul Blomfield (Labour - Sheffield Central)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, when he will publish the results of the oral health survey of 5-year-old children.
Answered by James Morris
We aim to publish the results of the 2021/22 oral health survey of five year old children in December 2022.