Radiotherapy

(asked on 10th September 2014) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to the Answer of 5 September 2014, Official Report, column 391W, on radiotherapy, whether individual funding requests to NHS England to provide Gamma Knife treatment at University College Hospital London's Queen Square site are made directly by University College Hospital London.


Answered by
 Portrait
Jane Ellison
This question was answered on 15th October 2014

University College London Hospital (UCLH) located in Queen’s Square does not provide gamma knife services. However, an independent provider called Queen’s Square Radiotherapy Centre Limited based at a site in Queen’s Square owned by ULCH does. Individual funding requests are, therefore, submitted by Queen’s Square Radiotherapy Centre Limited.

NHS England became responsible for commissioning radiotherapy services on 1 April 2013 and has no record of University Hospital College London notifying commissioners that it was a provider of this service.

Where contractual arrangements exist between NHS England and the hospital providing treatment, all patients will be treated in accordance with the prescribed clinical pathways and in line with those contractual agreements. It is only where providers treat outside the required contractual agreements that they do so at their own financial risk. However, as NHS England commissions gamma knife services, and we understand there is no waiting list, it is highly unlikely that the clinically urgent situation described in the question would arise.

Reticulating Splines