Asked by: Alistair Burt (Conservative - North East Bedfordshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans his Department has to allocate funding to IT connectivity for primary care optical practices to ensure safe and efficient referrals to hospital eye departments.
Answered by Seema Kennedy
The Department has no plans to allocate funding to enable IT connectivity between primary care optical practices and hospital eye departments. NHS England is continuing to work with the eye care sector and other key stakeholders on this area of work and will be considering priorities for IT investment later this year.
Asked by: Alistair Burt (Conservative - North East Bedfordshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the level of reserves held by The Caxton Foundation were, prior to their winding up in 2018; and how those reserves were distributed.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
For the cessation period which ended 16 August 2018, closing reserves were £203,657 which was returned to the Department, as the Founder, at close on 16 August 2018, in line with the requirements of the Trust Deed.
The Department has since directly financed the NHS Business Services Authority to administer the England Infected Blood Support Scheme to provide discretionary ex gratia financial assistance, to those individuals who have been shown to be infected or affected, by hepatitis C and HIV throughout the 1980s and 1990s. On 30 April 2019, the Department committed to increase the total amount of financial support for these individuals from £46 million to £75 million.
Asked by: Alistair Burt (Conservative - North East Bedfordshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what plans he has to expand health services in North East Bedfordshire to meet growing demand as a result of additional houses being built.
Answered by David Mowat
This information is not held centrally. Decisions regarding the planning of services in a local area are the responsibility of individual clinical commissioning groups.
Asked by: Alistair Burt (Conservative - North East Bedfordshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what progress has been made on incorporating current discretionary support payments into the new scheme for victims of contaminated blood; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
The new infected blood payment scheme will contain a discretionary element.
The three existing discretionary schemes will remain in place until the new scheme administrator is in place later in 2017. This will ensure a smooth handover of the discretionary elements under the new scheme.
Further details of the discretionary support scheme will be provided in advance of the new scheme being set up.
Asked by: Alistair Burt (Conservative - North East Bedfordshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to decrease the number of people missing hospital appointments.
Answered by Philip Dunne
Information published by NHS England shows that the proportion of hospital outpatient appointments that were missed by patients has decreased from 10.3% in 2009-10 to 8.9% in 2015-16.
It is the responsibility of National Health Service hospital trusts to make their own arrangements for reducing the number of missed appointments. Intensive Support Teams within NHS Improvement have published an information sheet1 containing a range of initiatives that NHS hospital trusts should consider.
The Department, in conjunction with behavioural scientists at Imperial College, has conducted randomised controlled trials at Barts Hospitals NHS Trust into the content of the most effective text reminder. The results were published in an online academic journal2 in September 2015 and summarised on the Department’s website3 in January 2016.
The NHS e-Referral Service replaced Choose and Book in June 2015. From 2016-17, as well as booking appointments, patients have been able to change or cancel their appointment on a smartphone, tablet or computer.
The NHS Constitution is clear that patients have responsibilities too, including “to keep appointments, or cancel within a reasonable time.”
References:
2 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0137306
3 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/reducing-missed-hospital-appointments-using-text-messages