Asked by: Lord Benyon (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many families seeking continuing healthcare pay for legal support.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
Information on the number of people paying for legal support regarding NHS Continuing Healthcare is not collected centrally.
Asked by: Lord Benyon (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what plans he has to simplify the continuing health care application process.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
The Department is working with NHS England, clinical commissioning groups, Directors of Adult Social Services, local authorities and stakeholder groups to understand how the NHS Continuing Healthcare experience can be improved for all.
Additionally, NHS England launched the NHS Continuing Healthcare Strategic Improvement Programme on 1 April 2017. The aim of the Strategic Improvement Programme is to provide fair access to NHS Continuing Healthcare in a way which ensures better outcomes, better experience, and better use of resources.
Asked by: Lord Benyon (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to the Answer of 9 July 2015 to Question 5351, what mechanisms are in place to assess whether the dietary and other standards set out in the service specifications for pancreatic cancer are being met.
Answered by Jane Ellison
The standards set for pancreatic cancer are reviewed in two ways:
- By local commissioning teams to check compliance against the service review with each provider. This is a formal process and providers not meeting the key requirements are required to produce an action plan. This includes compliance with multi-disciplinary team membership.
- Where Cancer Peer Review applies to a service, providers are assessed and measures that are not met are followed up with the Trust Board.
Some of the areas referred to in the service specification are linked services under the responsibility of clinical commissioning groups and are included so the relationships between different parts of the pathway are clear.
Asked by: Lord Benyon (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, when he expects the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence to commence work on the development of clinical guidance for pancreatic cancer.
Answered by George Freeman
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has advised that it expects to commence work on the development of a clinical guideline on pancreatic cancer in late Autumn 2015. The provisional schedule for development of this guideline will be made available on NICE’s website: www.nice.org.uk in due course.
Asked by: Lord Benyon (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to ensure that all pancreatic cancer patients have access to dietetic treatment, advice and support; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Jane Ellison
NHS England has a published a service specification for pancreatic cancer which clearly defines what it expects to be in place for providers to offer evidence-based, safe and effective pancreatic cancer services. This service specification has been developed by specialised clinicians, commissioners, expert patients and public health representatives to describe core and developmental service standards.
The service specification sets out that all patients with upper gastrointestinal disease (including pancreatic cancer) are at risk of dietary problems and should have access to full dietetic inpatient and outpatient services. Dieticians should be available to see patients during regular outpatient clinics and be available for consultation on ward rounds and multidisciplinary team meetings.
The full service specification can be found at:
http://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/a02-cncr-panc.pdf
Asked by: Lord Benyon (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, with reference to the Answer of 3 December 2014 to Question 216468, what progress he has made in establishing trials for pancreatic cancer patients using stereotactic ablative radiotherapy.
Answered by George Freeman
Cancer Research UK is funding the SPARC trial, which is led by the University of Oxford. This is a phase I trial of pre-operative, margin intensive, stereotactic body radiation therapy for previously untreated borderline resectable pancreatic cancer. The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Clinical Research Network is providing research infrastructure for the trial.