NHS: Stroke Care
Debate between Lord Kakkar and Baroness Manzoor
Baroness Manzoor
The noble Lord makes a very valid point. As I said, evidence-based medicine is speaking about a hub-and-spoke way forward. There is the national plan. We have set up a primary board that will look at reconfiguration of services and the workforce planning within it. We hope that some of those challenges can be met head on.
Lord Kakkar (CB)
My Lords, I declare my interest as chairman of University College London Partners. Is the Minister content that opportunities for rapid adoption of innovation, which could help identify those at greatest risk of stroke as a preventive strategy, and interventions that might improve stroke outcomes, are available across the entire NHS in England?
Baroness Manzoor
One can never be totally confident, but that is certainly the way we are working. As I said, we have set up the national board for stroke services, which will look at different pathways. It will look at assessment for prevention and rehabilitation, so that we can roll these out across the whole of the NHS. That is the plan and the £20.5 billion will unlock some of these services.
NHS Long-term Plan
Debate between Lord Kakkar and Baroness Manzoor
Baroness Manzoor
The plan is an overall strategy. The detail will be filled in over the coming months and years as we work closely with clinicians and people working in the NHS. That is why, looking at obesity, we introduced the sugar tax, which has been very successful. Noble Lords may say that we did not get as much money as we thought we would, but to my mind that is great; it means we have got preventive action because companies are now putting less sugar into drinks et cetera, which is a bonus. The noble Lord is right. That is why we are putting so much more money —£4.5 billion—into the preventive agenda so that we tackle the issues that he has just indicated.
Lord Kakkar (CB)
My Lords, I declare my interest as professor of surgery at University College London and chairman of UCL Partners. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord O’Shaughnessy, on the tremendous contribution he made to the work of your Lordships’ House as the Minister dealing with health and social care. He was greatly regarded and respected.
It is absolutely appropriate for Her Majesty’s Government to have focused on developing a strategy over 10 years to address the long-term sustainability of the National Health Service, which is something that your Lordships’ House elected to address through an ad hoc Select Committee two Sessions ago. There are many aspirations in this 10-year plan, but the important question is how Her Majesty’s Government propose to go about determining what is achieved, how it is to be implemented and how the outcomes are to be measured. There are important aspirations about, for instance, the adoption of personalised medicine, the adoption of genomics to drive diagnosis and the selection of care, the development of a workforce that is able to apply innovation and genomic medicine to the routine care of patients and the adoption of a digital strategy for patients and healthcare professionals to improve clinical outcomes. How are Her Majesty’s Government going to go about developing the metrics to determine how success should be measured? How will they go about providing a baseline picture of the current situation in different parts of the National Health Service so that the purpose and ambition of this plan can be properly measured? Which part of the NHS is going to be responsible for measurement and implementation: NHS England, NHS Improvement or, indeed, the Department of Health and Social Care?
Baroness Manzoor
That is almost all my brief. I echo the sentiments expressed by the noble Lord about my noble friend Lord O’Shaughnessy. The noble Lord is basically asking about next steps and who will be accountable for the plans. That is the question I asked: who is in charge? NHS Improvement and Health Education England are looking at workforce planning and clinical placements for nurses. They will relate to NHS England which is looking at the overall framework. The intention is that the work that my noble friend Lady Harding will be taking on will feed into workforce planning, and we will produce an overall framework in relation to clinical issues. A template will also be produced so that we know what best practice is, and this can then be filtered down to local areas through the integrated care system and clinical commissioning groups. NHS England will retain the overall strategy for all this. I hope that I have answered the noble Lord’s questions. As he knows, there are variations and a number of health inequalities around the country. It is imperative that we begin to address those and that is behind part of the framework.