Asked by: Andrew Bingham (Conservative - High Peak)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many patients with long-term health conditions which entitle them to free prescriptions have been fined for not renewing their certificates in each of the last five years.
Answered by George Freeman
The Prescription Exemption Checking Service is delivered by the NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) as commissioned by NHS England. NHSBSA assumed the responsibility for this service from 17 September 2014. Prior to this date it was the responsibility of primary care trusts and NHS England Area Teams, for which no data is held.
From 17 September 2014 to 16 January 2015 a total of 1,475 patients who have declared they hold a valid certificate which indicates that they are entitled to free prescriptions due to a long-term health condition have paid a penalty charge in full with a further 898 patients who have opted to pay the penalty charge by instalments.
The NHSBSA cannot identify from the exemption checking process which patients claiming medical exemption have been sent a penalty charge notice as a result of the patient not renewing their medical exemption certificate.
For those patients who have paid a penalty charge the cause for the incorrect claim for free prescriptions is not known. There are various reasons which could include:
- expiry of current medical exemption certificate; and
- never been in receipt of a medical exemption certificate.
Asked by: Andrew Bingham (Conservative - High Peak)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he has taken to publicise the fact that certificates of entitlement to free prescriptions for chronic and incurable conditions are time-limited.
Answered by George Freeman
The NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) sent all English pharmacies and general practitioner practices a supply of posters and booklets entitled ‘Claiming free prescriptions?’ in October 2014 as part of the centralisation of the prescription exemption checking process within the NHSBSA. The poster warns patients of the consequences of claiming free prescriptions incorrectly and directs them to the booklet for more information on eligibility, which states that medical exemption certificates are valid for five years. The poster and booklet are also published on the NHSBSA website at:
http://www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/PrescriptionServices/4666.aspx
The covering letter sent to patients by the NHSBSA along with their medical exemption certificates also references that certificates are liable for renewal, and the expiry date is printed on the certificate itself. The letter also directs recipients to the NHSBSA website and the NHS Help with Health Costs Facebook page where more information is available. The NHS Choices Help with Health Costs pages also contain information about eligibility for free prescriptions, including details on medical exemptions and certificate duration.
Asked by: Andrew Bingham (Conservative - High Peak)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will make it his policy that the NHS Business Unit should contact GPs when a certificate of entitlement to free prescriptions is due to expire.
Answered by George Freeman
We do not believe it would be appropriate for the NHS Business Services Authority to contact general practitioners about renewal of medical exemption certificates. Information is already sent directly to patients about the validity of these certificates, which includes the date of expiry printed on the certificate and a reminder sent to the patient one month before the certificate expires. The wording of the declaration on the prescription form is also a prompt to a patient to check that their certificate is valid.
Asked by: Andrew Bingham (Conservative - High Peak)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what research his Department has commissioned into complex regional pain syndrome.
Answered by George Freeman
The Department has not commissioned specific research into complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) but a range of related research is funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR).
The NIHR Clinical Research Network is currently recruiting patients to two studies relating to CRPS:
- Development of an Electrical Sensory Discrimination Therapies device for the relief of chronic pain in CRPS. A proof of concept study
- An Intervention Trial to Investigate the Effectiveness of Visual Illusions in Manipulating Body Perception Disturbances to Reduce Chronic Pain and Improve Movement Performance
There is also an active Efficacy and Mechanism Evaluation (EME) Researcher-Led project (which is funded by the Medical Research Council and managed by NIHR):
- Low-dose Intravenous Immunoglobulin Treatment for Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (‘LIPS’) Randomised Controlled Trial.
Other research, carried out within the last two years, includes:
A Health Services and Delivery Research project:
- Meeting the support needs of patients with Complex Regional Pain Syndrome through innovative use of wiki technology
CRN studies:
- A Multi-Centre International Study Exploring the Patients' Definition of Recovery from Complex Regional Pain Syndrome
- Visually Manipulating Body Perception Disturbances to Treat Chronic Pain: An Exploratory Study
NIHR Career Development Fellowships:
- Understanding sensorimotor integration and its role in pain. Feasibility study to evaluate the potential of multi-modal imaging systems in CRPS
- Sensorimotor conflict and its relationship to behavioural and neurophysiological variables in CRPS, FMS, arthritis and healthy volunteers
Asked by: Andrew Bingham (Conservative - High Peak)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many people have been fined for falsely claiming free prescriptions in each of the last five years.
Answered by George Freeman
The Prescription Exemption Checking Service is delivered by the NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) as commissioned by NHS England. NHSBSA assumed the responsibility for this service from 17 September 2014. Prior to this date it was the responsibility of primary care trusts and NHS England Area Teams, for which no data is held.
From 17 September 2014 to 16 January 2015 5,572 patients have paid a penalty charge in full with a further 2,252 patients opting to pay the penalty charges in instalments.
Asked by: Andrew Bingham (Conservative - High Peak)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what progress his Department has made in treating pain since the Chief Medical Officer's annual report in 2008 called for the issue to receive greater priority.
Answered by Norman Lamb
In response to the Chief Medical Officer’s (CMO’s) report 2008 report, the Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership working with The British Pain Society and Dr Foster undertook the first ever National Pain Audit, which launched in 2009. The findings from the three year study, which appeared in three reports, highlighted variation in service provision and made a number of recommendations for the National Health Service to improve quality of care for patients suffering from chronic pain.
Since 1 April 2013, NHS England became responsible for the commissioning of specialised pain services for patients with chronic pain. NHS England has published a service specification for patients with chronic pain that sets out what providers must have in place in order to deliver evidence-based, safe and effective services. It supports equity of access to a nationally consistent, high quality service for patients. The specification can be found at the following link:
www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/d08-spec-serv-pain-mgt.pdf
In the time since the CMO report, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has produced a range of guidance to support clinicians to diagnose and treat a range of conditions causing ongoing pain, most recently publishing the 2013 guideline Neuropathic pain: The pharmacological management of neuropathic pain in adults in non-specialist settings. Finally, the British Pain Society collaborated with the Map of Medicine to produce a range of evidence-based pain care pathways, published in October 2014. These support NHS commissioners, providers and patients to access to high-quality, practice-informed care pathways that map the journey from initial presentation through to ongoing management of chronic pain. This can be accessed on the NHS Choices website at the following link:
http://www.nhs.uk/aboutNHSChoices/aboutnhschoices/partners/MapofMedicine/Pages/Introduction.aspx.
Asked by: Andrew Bingham (Conservative - High Peak)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will make an estimate of what it would have cost to have continued paying police widows' pensions to those widows or widowers who lost their serving husbands or wives between 1987 and 2006, before officers had the option to opt in to a scheme which permitted payments to continue to a surviving spouse on remarriage.
Answered by Mike Penning
No such estimate has been made. The police pension schemes are administered locally by police forces, so data on this specific issue is not held centrally.
Asked by: Andrew Bingham (Conservative - High Peak)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, when she plans to publish the Uplands Stakeholder Forum hen harrier sub-group draft joint action plan.
Answered by George Eustice
Defra officials are currently working with Sub-Group members to finalise the Joint Action Plan with a view to publishing it as soon as possible.
Asked by: Andrew Bingham (Conservative - High Peak)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many packages of books delivered to HM Prison Drake Hall were found to contain drugs in each of the last five years.
Answered by Andrew Selous - Second Church Estates Commissioner
The trafficking of drugs and other unauthorised items presents a serious threat to security in prisons and the National Offender Management Service employs a range of measures to deter and detect such activity.
There have always been controls on the sending of parcels into prisons; the revised Incentives and Earned Privileges (IEP) national policy framework, which came into effect on 1 November 2013, has simply ensured greater consistency across the prison estate. We now have simple rules that allow prisoners a parcel of items when they first arrive in prison, and then only further items in exceptional circumstances. The restrictions were introduced to enhance existing security measures and to prevent the IEP policy framework from being undermined.
Prisoners continue to be able to order books from reputable suppliers, which they can receive via the prison shop and they can also borrow books from the prison library.
Incidents of finds of illicit items prior to the introduction of the revised IEP arrangements are recorded on a central incident reporting system. A study of data reported by Drake Hall prison during the period in question indicates that there were no finds of illicit drugs in items sent in.
Asked by: Andrew Bingham (Conservative - High Peak)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many people in High Peak constituency have had to wait more than (a) 28 days, (b) three months and (c) six months for Improving Access to Psychological Therapies services in each of the last five years.
Answered by Norman Lamb
Information is not available in the format requested.
This Government is committed to ensuring mental health is treated equally with physical health and is increasing access to mental health services through the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme and talking therapies.
Information on the number of patients waiting more than 28 days in 2011-12 and 2012-13 in each quarter for Derbyshire County Primary Care Trust (PCT) and Tameside and Glossop PCT is shown in Table 1.
The information for the number of patients waiting more than; 28 days, 90 days and 180 days in 2013-14 for NHS North Derbyshire clinical commissioning group (CCG) and NHS Tameside and Glossop CCG is shown in Table 2.