Asked by: Andrew Love (Labour (Co-op) - Edmonton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if his Department will publish a comparison of cancer patient experience between hospital trusts; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Jane Ellison
The 2014 National Cancer Patient Experience Survey (CPES), which is managed by NHS England, asked over 110,000 cancer patients across the country for their views on their care with 64% responding. Macmillan Cancer Support has published league tables constructed from the data. The tables can be found at:
My Rt. hon. Friend the Secretary of State meets with NHS England regularly and discusses a wide range of issues.
NHS England is working with NHS Improving Quality, Macmillan Cancer Support and Strategic Clinical Networks to spread good practice across hospitals providing cancer care, including how best to utilise CPES findings. Action includes:
- the launch of an NHS Improving Quality project that pairs highly-rated cancer trusts with trusts that have potential to improve;
- regional events for commissioners looking at how CPES results inform commissioning decisions around cancer patient experience;
- publication of guidance on using CPES data to drive improvement which will be sent to all Trusts who participate in the CPES.
NHS England committed in their Five Year Forward View to improving the information given to people who use services, their families and carers. This builds on NHS England’s Commitments to Carers, published in May 2014, with 37 commitments including NHS England supporting the relevant bodies in signposting carers to information and advice about available support.
NHS England also has a strand of work focusing on improving the quality, integrity and accessibility of health related information, including information targeting carers. In addition, NHS Choices holds a wide range of information relating to the support available for carers.
Asked by: Andrew Love (Labour (Co-op) - Edmonton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps (a) his Department and (b) NHS England is taking to ensure the families of cancer patients are given the information needed to help care for them at home.
Answered by Jane Ellison
The 2014 National Cancer Patient Experience Survey (CPES), which is managed by NHS England, asked over 110,000 cancer patients across the country for their views on their care with 64% responding. Macmillan Cancer Support has published league tables constructed from the data. The tables can be found at:
My Rt. hon. Friend the Secretary of State meets with NHS England regularly and discusses a wide range of issues.
NHS England is working with NHS Improving Quality, Macmillan Cancer Support and Strategic Clinical Networks to spread good practice across hospitals providing cancer care, including how best to utilise CPES findings. Action includes:
- the launch of an NHS Improving Quality project that pairs highly-rated cancer trusts with trusts that have potential to improve;
- regional events for commissioners looking at how CPES results inform commissioning decisions around cancer patient experience;
- publication of guidance on using CPES data to drive improvement which will be sent to all Trusts who participate in the CPES.
NHS England committed in their Five Year Forward View to improving the information given to people who use services, their families and carers. This builds on NHS England’s Commitments to Carers, published in May 2014, with 37 commitments including NHS England supporting the relevant bodies in signposting carers to information and advice about available support.
NHS England also has a strand of work focusing on improving the quality, integrity and accessibility of health related information, including information targeting carers. In addition, NHS Choices holds a wide range of information relating to the support available for carers.
Asked by: Andrew Love (Labour (Co-op) - Edmonton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what discussions he has had with (a) NHS England and (b) clinical commissioning groups on hospital trusts using action plans to improve their National Cancer Patient Experience Survey results; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Jane Ellison
The 2014 National Cancer Patient Experience Survey (CPES), which is managed by NHS England, asked over 110,000 cancer patients across the country for their views on their care with 64% responding. Macmillan Cancer Support has published league tables constructed from the data. The tables can be found at:
My Rt. hon. Friend the Secretary of State meets with NHS England regularly and discusses a wide range of issues.
NHS England is working with NHS Improving Quality, Macmillan Cancer Support and Strategic Clinical Networks to spread good practice across hospitals providing cancer care, including how best to utilise CPES findings. Action includes:
- the launch of an NHS Improving Quality project that pairs highly-rated cancer trusts with trusts that have potential to improve;
- regional events for commissioners looking at how CPES results inform commissioning decisions around cancer patient experience;
- publication of guidance on using CPES data to drive improvement which will be sent to all Trusts who participate in the CPES.
NHS England committed in their Five Year Forward View to improving the information given to people who use services, their families and carers. This builds on NHS England’s Commitments to Carers, published in May 2014, with 37 commitments including NHS England supporting the relevant bodies in signposting carers to information and advice about available support.
NHS England also has a strand of work focusing on improving the quality, integrity and accessibility of health related information, including information targeting carers. In addition, NHS Choices holds a wide range of information relating to the support available for carers.
Asked by: Andrew Love (Labour (Co-op) - Edmonton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many GP practices (a) closed and (b) opened in (i) England, (ii) Greater London and (iii) Enfield in each of the last five years; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Dan Poulter
The Health and Social Care Information Centre collect information on the number of practices opened and closed, which is contained in the attached table.
It is important to note that these figures also include practice mergers and takeovers and do not provide an accurate representation of activity or service provision. In many cases, practices listed in these figures as having closed, will have in fact merged and will continue to see patients. In addition, in this time period the definition of general practice has changed to become a more stringent classification.
Asked by: Andrew Love (Labour (Co-op) - Edmonton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what the average GP list size was in (a) England, (b) Greater London and (c) Enfield in each of the last five years; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Dan Poulter
The requested information is contained in the following table:
Average GP practice list size by selected areas in England, 2009-2013
| 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 |
England
| 6,637 | 6,610 | 6,651 | 6,891 | 7,034 |
London Area
| 5,706 | 5,774 | 5,789 | 6,113 | 6,213 |
Enfield Clinical | 4,775 | 4,667 | 4,904 | 5,617 | 5,798 |
Notes: 1 Workforce data is available by National Health Service organisation only, not geographical regions such as Greater London. Greater London is captured by London Area Team and Enfield by Enfield Clinical Commissioning Group. Prior to 2013, the area of London was serviced by London Strategic Health Authority and Enfield was serviced by Enfield Primary Care Trust. There is no break in the data as the old and new London organisations are coterminous and therefore the data is still comparable over the years provided.
As per the latest GP contract, patients register with a GP practice and are attributed to the practice, not a specific GP.
Data quality: The Health and Social Care Information Centre seeks to minimise inaccuracies and the effect of missing and invalid data, but responsibility for data accuracy resides with the organisations providing the data. Methods are continually being updated to improve data quality where changes impact on figures already published. This is assessed, but unless it is significant at national level, figures are not updated. Impact at detailed or local level is footnoted in relevant analyses.
Source: The Health and Social Care Information Centre General and Personal Medical Statistics. Patient registration information taken from National Health Application and Infrastructure Services Exeter GP payments system.
Asked by: Andrew Love (Labour (Co-op) - Edmonton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to raise awareness among health professionals of the symptoms of brain tumours and their effects on children; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Jane Ellison
Improving Outcomes: A Strategy for Cancer, published in January 2011, committed over £450 million up to 2014-15 to achieve earlier diagnosis of cancer, including improving direct general practitioner (GP) access to key diagnostic tests, such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans to support the diagnosis of brain tumours. In 2012, the Department published ‘Direct access to diagnostic tests for cancer: best practice referral pathways for general practitioners' to provide criteria for accessing key diagnostic tests including MRI brain scans. The guide aims to raise awareness of the symptoms that require urgent referral to specialists and sets out where a direct referral for an MRI brain scan may benefit patients through achieving a faster diagnosis. NHS England monitors the use of these diagnostic tests through the Diagnostic Imaging Dataset.
To increase GP awareness of brain tumours in children, in 2012, the Department funded British Medical Journal Learning to provide an e-learning module for GPs on diagnosing osteosarcoma and brain tumours in children. One part of the module supports GPs to understand the main types of brain tumours in children and young people, their common symptom presentations and to recognise when patients need urgent referral, the other deals with communication barriers, and provides potential ways to address these barriers in GP consultations.
In addition to this, since 2005, the Referral Guidelines for Suspected Cancer, published by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has supported GPs to identify patients with the symptoms of suspected cancer, including brain tumours, and urgently refer them as appropriate. NICE is in the process of updating this guidance to ensure that it reflects the latest evidence and the anticipated publication date for the revised guidelines is May 2015.
I have also recently written to all Health and Wellbeing boards to make them aware of the briefing material developed by the “Headsmart” charity, which aims to increase awareness of the symptoms of brain tumours among parents, schools and health professionals.