Asked by: Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat - Westmorland and Lonsdale)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the Answer of 21 June 2022 to Question 16924 on Breast Cancer: Screening, what steps he is taking to incentivise Community Diagnostic Centres to offer of diagnostic mammography services.
Answered by Neil O'Brien
£2.3 billion was awarded at the Spending Review in 2021 to transform diagnostic services over the next three years. Most of this will help increase the number of Community Diagnostic Centres (CDCs) up to 160 by March 2025, expanding and protecting elective planned diagnostic services. The remainder of the funding will increase capacity for imaging, endoscopy as well as lung and mammography screening, and improve digital diagnostics. Integrated care systems are responsible for ensuring their patients have adequate access to diagnostic mammography services according to local need.
NHS England has asked all CDCs in geographies with high cancer backlogs to prioritise capacity within imaging and endoscopy to accelerate diagnosis for people currently awaiting diagnostic treatment within the 62 day backlog. Remaining CDC revenue funding is being prioritised for this purpose.
Asked by: Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat - Westmorland and Lonsdale)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to his oral statement of 9 January 2023 on NHS winter pressures, Official Report, column 287, what interventions using artificial intelligence his Department is considering for wider implementation.
Answered by Will Quince
The Department is funding the Artificial Intelligence in Health and Care Award, which is accelerating the testing and evaluation some of the most promising artificial intelligence (AI) technologies that can support clinicians in diagnosis, monitoring disease and managing health conditions at home.
The Award has provided more than £100 million to 77 AI technologies which are live in 53 hospitals in the United Kingdom.
The Department has also provided £800,000 to Health Data Research UK (HDR UK) to fund 16 data-driven projects, including ‘machine-learning’, to pin-point and overcome pressures in the health care system.
The HDR UK projects are due to start early this year and will share their findings later in the year.
The Department is also piloting operational efficiency and workforce productivity tools that can help significantly reduce elective care waiting lists, which will also help to relieve some of the pressures caused by winter. The tools have been developed as part of the NHS National Data Platform. During the proof-of-concept stage, they helped Chelsea and Westminster NHS Foundation Trust achieve a 46% reduction in their inpatient waiting list, improved theatre utilisation by 6% and re-prioritised more than 2,000 patients.
This proof-of-concept has since transitioned to a pilot and the tools are now being tested in 27 trusts. The pilot will report its finding in March 2023.
Asked by: Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat - Westmorland and Lonsdale)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the Prime Minister's speech on 4 January 2023 entitled building a better future, whether he plans to publish a strategy on reducing NHS waiting lists.
Answered by Will Quince
The ‘Delivery plan for tackling the COVID-19 backlog of elective care’ published in February 2022 sets out the action that will be taken and is already underway to support the healthcare system in England as it recovers from the disruption caused by the pandemic and to deliver the necessary reforms that are important to its long-term future.
Tacking elective care is a top delivery priority for the Government and regular updates from the National Health Service, via NHS England, to the Secretary of State are the key mechanism used to assess progress against ambitious elective recovery targets. The Department will continue to work closely with NHS England to deliver this plan, providing the necessary support and challenge to make sure it benefits patients and delivers value for money.
Asked by: Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat - Westmorland and Lonsdale)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what proportion of prostate cancer patients are asymptomatic when they are first diagnosed.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The 2018 National Cancer Diagnosis Audit collected referral data from general practitioners (GPs) on 64,489 cancer diagnoses in 2018, including 9,839 cases of prostate cancer. Symptoms were reported by the GP for 6,648 (68%) of all prostate cancer cases. The remainder of the cases were recorded with ‘not known’ (8%) or ‘not applicable’ (22%) symptoms.
Asked by: Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat - Westmorland and Lonsdale)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the potential merits of introducing a national screening programme for prostate cancer.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The UK National Screening Committee is due to review the evidence to screen for prostate cancer this year.
Asked by: Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat - Westmorland and Lonsdale)
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 5 September 2022 to Question 42282 on Cancer: Radiotherapy, when he plans to publish the NHS England capacity and demand review of external beam radiotherapy capacity.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS England will complete the capacity and demand review of external beam radiotherapy capacity in 2022/23.
Asked by: Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat - Westmorland and Lonsdale)
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 5 September 2022 to Question 42282 on Cancer: Radiotherapy, what the timeline is for publication of the NHS England review into radiotherapy capacity.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS England will complete the capacity and demand review of external beam radiotherapy capacity in 2022/23.
Asked by: Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat - Westmorland and Lonsdale)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much NHS England has spent on (a) fees and (b) any other costs with Niche Health and Social Care Consulting since 2019.
Answered by Will Quince
The following table shows expenditure by NHS England on fees and other costs with Niche Health and Social Care Consulting in each financial year since 2019/20.
| 2019/20 | 2020/21 | 2021/22 |
Fees | £855,000 | £1,647,000 | £1,917,000 |
Other | £410,000 | £333,000 | £27,000 |
Total | £1,265,000 | £1,980,000 | £1,944,000 |
Source: NHS England
Asked by: Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat - Westmorland and Lonsdale)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, for what reason the findings of Exercise Alice were not published following the outbreak of covid-19; and whether details of that exercise were provided to advisory committees involved in the Government's response to that outbreak.
Answered by Caroline Johnson
The Department does not routinely publish reports on exercises. Exercise Alice was not intended to test elements of preparedness for a pandemic scale event, but to assess the United Kingdom’s readiness for a potential outbreak of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), a High Consequence Infectious Disease. MERS-CoV, which causes MERS, is a different virus to SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19.
The recommendations from Exercise Alice informed updates to guidance for the health and social care system on the management of patients with MERS and on infection prevention and control for healthcare professionals. These were published as updates to guidance on MERS-CoV prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and is available at the following link:
Asked by: Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat - Westmorland and Lonsdale)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate she has made of the average time it has taken for dentists whose primary qualification is from outside the UK to receive an NHS performer number from the time of application in each NHS region in each of the last five financial years.
Answered by Will Quince
This information is not held centrally.