Asked by: Preet Kaur Gill (Labour (Co-op) - Birmingham, Edgbaston)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many calls NHS 111 received about dental (a) pain and (b) other problems in each of the last five years.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The attached table shows the number of calls received by NHS 111 for patients with dental symptoms for each year from 2019/20 to 2023/24, broken into symptom groups, as well as the yearly and sum total of calls for patients with dental symptoms.
It is not possible to tell from this table how many calls the National Health Service received specifically about dental pain, but in the last five years there have been just under 4.8 million calls to NHS 111 resulting in a disposition of dental symptoms. The majority of these calls, four million, were regarding toothache without a dental injury.
Asked by: Preet Kaur Gill (Labour (Co-op) - Birmingham, Edgbaston)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the letter of 7 March 2023 from the then Minister for Social Care to the Chief Executive of the British Liver Trust, whether it remains his policy that fibroscans will be in use at 100 community diagnostic centres by March 2025; how many fibroscans have been delivered to community diagnostic centres since March 2023; and whether he has made an assessment of the potential merits of setting a new target.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
There is currently no national target specifically relating to the availability of FibroScan equipment, or testing for liver fibrosis, through Community Diagnostic Centres (CDCs) in England by March 2025.
The CDC modality offer is based on the recommendations in the Sir Mike Richards Review, in which Fibroscans were included as a suitable optional additional test for use in CDCs. Decisions on what modalities are offered outside of the core requirements of CDCs will be based on local need and decisions.
I can confirm there are currently plans for 12 CDCs to offer FibroScan testing, of which seven are operational. A further five CDCs plan to offer this service by the end of March 2024.
However, the Government takes very seriously the importance of preventative action, and of identifying patients at risk of liver disease and diagnosing it earlier. It is a fast-growing cause of mortality and morbidity; and one we want to make progress in tackling.
The Government is working with the National Health Service to support earlier diagnosis of liver disease and identifying patients at risk. This includes plans agreed as part of the £2.3 billion diagnostics transformation programme, including upgrading laboratory digital capabilities to ensure that labs across the country have the capability required to offer Intelligent Liver Function Tests. This test is highly effective as a first line diagnostic test to identify patients at higher risk, who may benefit from a FibroScan, or enhanced Liver function test.
The Government is also working with the NHS to deliver and consider the result from the pilot of the community liver health check programme – which in its first year delivered over 17,000 FibroScans to individuals at particular risk of liver disease, through the use of 40 FibroScanners, 12 of which were located in mobile units, across 19 local areas. This is in addition to wider work on health prevention, including vaccination and alcohol awareness programmes.
The Government will continue to look at options to go further. Over the coming year, NHS England are due to pilot a new diagnostic pathway it has developed for liver disease, which will include Fibrosis scanning in CDCs – we look forward to seeing the results of that pilot.
Asked by: Preet Kaur Gill (Labour (Co-op) - Birmingham, Edgbaston)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the budget is for the Smile for Life programme, and if she will publish a breakdown of costs.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
To improve prevention for our youngest children, we will roll out support education targeting one to three year olds in the new Smile for Life programme. We will work closely with local areas to ensure our national advice and educational materials are tailored appropriately for nurseries and other early years settings.
The Dentistry Recovery Plan is fully funded with £200 million, and will deliver new initiatives to address the challenges facing National Health Service dentistry, including an additional 2.5 million appointments.
Overall NHS spending totals will be set at budget in the usual way. We are committed to protecting funding for dentistry purposes and will ringfence dental funding in 2024/25. We will issue guidance to integrated care boards shortly, through NHS England’s 2024/25 revenue finance and contracting guidance.
Asked by: Preet Kaur Gill (Labour (Co-op) - Birmingham, Edgbaston)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many dentists waited (a) less than three weeks, (b) more than three weeks and (c) more than six weeks to receive a response to an application to the Dental Performers List in each of the last 10 years.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Dentists must be listed on the Dental Performers List (DPL), to deliver National Health Service dental services in England. The DPL is managed by NHS England, which does not currently collect data on DPL application processing times in the format requested. NHS England is committed to working to ensure DPL applications are managed as quickly as possible to support the delivery of NHS dentistry.
Asked by: Preet Kaur Gill (Labour (Co-op) - Birmingham, Edgbaston)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the gross annual budget was for NHS dental services before deductions for (a) underspends and (b) underperformance for each year from 2010-11 to the latest year for which data is available.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Whilst data for dental budgets in prior years is not held centrally, we currently invest more than £3 billion in National Health Service dental services each year. We are committed to protecting this funding for dentistry purposes, and will ringfence the funding in 2024/25. We will issue guidance to integrated care boards (ICBs) shortly, through NHS England’s 2024/25 revenue finance and contracting guidance. To ensure compliance against this requirement, and to strengthen oversight of funding that is used to deliver access to NHS dental care, NHS England will meet with and collect monthly returns from all ICBs, to establish current and planned spend against the ringfenced dental allocations budget.
Asked by: Preet Kaur Gill (Labour (Co-op) - Birmingham, Edgbaston)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much expenditure was reclaimed (a) nationally and (b) per region by NHS England from primary care dental practices that did not meet contractual targets in (i) 2019-20, (ii) 2020-21, (iii) 2021-22 and (iv) 2022-23; and if she will make an estimate of the total sum that is predicted to be reclaimed by the end of 2023-24 financial year.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Data for expenditure reclaimed for activity in the years 2019-20, 2020-21, 2021-22 is available from NHS Business Services Authority. This information is published here: https://www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/dental-data/nhs-payments-dentists.
Data for activity in 2022-23 and 2023-24 will be published in due course.
Asked by: Preet Kaur Gill (Labour (Co-op) - Birmingham, Edgbaston)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will issue guidance to care settings on how to (a) support and (b) maintain contact between Parkinsons’ patients and their family members and carers.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Visits from loved ones are vital to the health and wellbeing of people receiving care in care homes, hospitals and hospices. In December 2023, the Government laid before Parliament the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) (Amendment) Regulations 2023, which adds visiting and accompanying as a new fundamental standard for the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to inspect care and health settings against. These regulations will come into force on 6 April 2024.
The CQC is now consulting on its proposed guidance for this legislation, which will help the health and social care sector understand and meet the new standard on visiting and accompanying in care homes, hospitals, and hospices and their roles and responsibilities under it. The guidance also sets out what people using health and social care services and their families, friends or advocates can expect. The consultation can be found at the following link:
Asked by: Preet Kaur Gill (Labour (Co-op) - Birmingham, Edgbaston)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether she has made an assessment of the potential merits of issuing carers' permits to support carers to (a) keep in contact with and (b) accompany patients in care settings.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
In order to strengthen the requirements around visiting and accompanying in a range of health and care settings, we recently introduced legislation to make visiting and accompanying a Care Quality Commission fundamental standard of care. Settings will be inspected against this standard, which will come into force on 6 April 2024.
Asked by: Preet Kaur Gill (Labour (Co-op) - Birmingham, Edgbaston)
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 reduce the number of prostate cancer deaths.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Early diagnosis and treatment are crucial to improving survival rates for cancer, including prostate cancer, and thereby reducing the number of cancer deaths. The Department is taking steps to reduce cancer diagnosis and treatment waiting times and is working jointly with NHS England on implementing the delivery plan for tackling the COVID-19 backlogs in elective care. This includes plans to spend more than £8 billion from 2022/23 to 2024/25 to help drive up and protect elective activity, including cancer diagnosis and treatment.
To support early diagnosis, NHS England introduced the Faster Diagnosis Standard (FDS) which sets a maximum target of 28 days from urgent suspected general practice or screening referral to patients being told that they have cancer, or that cancer is ruled out. To achieve this target, NHS England have streamlined cancer pathways, including implementing a best-timed prostate cancer diagnostic pathway so that those suspected of prostate cancer receive a multi-parametric, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan first, which ensures only those men most at-risk undergo an invasive biopsy. Best practice timed pathways support the on-going improvement effort to shorten diagnosis pathways, reduce variation, improve experience of care, and meet the FDS. For patients, the prostate best-practice timed pathway may reduce anxiety and uncertainty of a possible cancer diagnosis, with reduced time between referral and receiving the outcome of diagnostic test
In November 2023 we announced a £42 million screening trial with Prostate Cancer UK, to find ways of detecting the country’s most common male cancer earlier. The first-of-its-kind trial, called TRANSFORM, will use innovative screening methods like MRI scans to detect prostate cancer, and will see hundreds of thousands of men across the country participating
On 24 January 2023, the Government announced that it will publish a Major Conditions Strategy to consider the six conditions, including cancer, that contribute most to morbidity and mortality across the population in England. We published the Major Conditions Strategy: Case for Change and Our Strategic Framework on 14 August 2023, which sets out our approach to making the change over the next five years that will deliver the most value in facing the health challenges of today, and of the decades ahead.
Asked by: Preet Kaur Gill (Labour (Co-op) - Birmingham, Edgbaston)
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 help tackle MMR vaccine disinformation; and what estimate she has made of the number of measles cases by (a) region, (b) local authority, (c) socioeconomic group and (d) ethnic background in the last five years.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) ensures all relevant healthcare professionals have access to resources to maintain confidence in the national vaccination programmes including measles, mumps and rubella (MMR).
NHS England is actively working with regional and local systems in low uptake communities, to enhance outreach activities and improve access to vaccination. UKHSA has developed an evaluation framework and resources to facilitate sharing of effective approaches. To assess the level of public confidence in the vaccination programmes, UKHSA undertakes annual surveys, to understand how knowledge, beliefs and attitudes towards vaccine safety, and disease severity influence uptake. This information is used to inform programme planning and implementation and the development of effective communication strategies.
UKHSA publishes routine data on laboratory confirmed measles cases by age and region monthly, which is available at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/measles-guidance-data-and-analysis#epidemiology
This routine report does not include a breakdown of cases by local authority due to the risk of deductive disclosure. UKHSA does not routinely capture robust data on ethnicity or socioeconomic status of cases. However, data can be enhanced retrospectively and analysed over longer periods to describe inequalities in burden of disease. Most recently this has been published in 2019, and is available at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/measles-and-rubella-elimination-uk-strategy