Asked by: Anna Firth (Conservative - Southend West)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether prescriptions obtained from a pharmacy are charged as a private patients.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom
In England the National Health Service has not commissioned a national prescribing service from community pharmacy, and therefore community pharmacists cannot prescribe NHS medicines. Some pharmacies do offer a private prescribing service, for which they charge patients.
Where community pharmacies supply medicines as part of an NHS service, for example the new Pharmacy First service, the medicines are supplied on the NHS and the normal prescription charges rules apply.
NHS England is working with integrated care boards, who are currently recruiting over 200 community pharmacy pathfinder sites to establish how independent prescribing can be incorporated into clinical services available to the public through community pharmacy in the longer-term.
Asked by: Anna Firth (Conservative - Southend West)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will meet the hon. Member for Southend West to discuss NHS dental provision in Southend.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom
Ministers are always keen to discuss issues regarding National Health Service dentistry.
Our plan for dentistry, to be published shortly, will build upon the first package of reforms agreed in July 2022, which included changes to banding and the introduction of a minimum Units of Dental Activity value. Our plan will include addressing how we continue to improve access, particularly for new patients; and how we make NHS work more attractive to ensure NHS dentists are incentivised to deliver more NHS care.
The NHS Long Term Workforce Plan, published on 30 June 2023, sets out the steps the National Health Service and its partners need to take to deliver an NHS workforce that meets the changing needs of the population over the next 15 years. These include a 40% increase to dentistry undergraduate training places by 2031/32. To support this ambition, we will expand places by 24% by 2028/29, taking the overall number that year to 1,000 places.
From 1 April 2023, responsibility for commissioning primary care dentistry to meet the needs of the local population has been delegated to all integrated care boards (ICBs) across England. ICBs are responsible for having local processes in place to identify areas of need and determine the priorities for investment.
The Mid and South Essex Integrated Care Board has put in place initiatives to improve access to dental care for the whole population. The Dental Access Pilot allows dentists to be open outside of their normal working hours to see patients in need, self-referred or referred from NHS 111. Up to 4 December 2023, just under 4,000 additional patients have been seen because of this work. The pilot will continue until March 2025.
Patients who are struggling to find a local dentist can contact NHS England’s Customer Contact Centre for assistance or contact NHS 111 if seeking urgent care.
Asked by: Anna Firth (Conservative - Southend West)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to increase the capacity of NHS dentists in Southend.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom
Ministers are always keen to discuss issues regarding National Health Service dentistry.
Our plan for dentistry, to be published shortly, will build upon the first package of reforms agreed in July 2022, which included changes to banding and the introduction of a minimum Units of Dental Activity value. Our plan will include addressing how we continue to improve access, particularly for new patients; and how we make NHS work more attractive to ensure NHS dentists are incentivised to deliver more NHS care.
The NHS Long Term Workforce Plan, published on 30 June 2023, sets out the steps the National Health Service and its partners need to take to deliver an NHS workforce that meets the changing needs of the population over the next 15 years. These include a 40% increase to dentistry undergraduate training places by 2031/32. To support this ambition, we will expand places by 24% by 2028/29, taking the overall number that year to 1,000 places.
From 1 April 2023, responsibility for commissioning primary care dentistry to meet the needs of the local population has been delegated to all integrated care boards (ICBs) across England. ICBs are responsible for having local processes in place to identify areas of need and determine the priorities for investment.
The Mid and South Essex Integrated Care Board has put in place initiatives to improve access to dental care for the whole population. The Dental Access Pilot allows dentists to be open outside of their normal working hours to see patients in need, self-referred or referred from NHS 111. Up to 4 December 2023, just under 4,000 additional patients have been seen because of this work. The pilot will continue until March 2025.
Patients who are struggling to find a local dentist can contact NHS England’s Customer Contact Centre for assistance or contact NHS 111 if seeking urgent care.
Asked by: Anna Firth (Conservative - Southend West)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to help improve dental hygiene in Southend.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom
Ministers are always keen to discuss issues regarding National Health Service dentistry.
Our plan for dentistry, to be published shortly, will build upon the first package of reforms agreed in July 2022, which included changes to banding and the introduction of a minimum Units of Dental Activity value. Our plan will include addressing how we continue to improve access, particularly for new patients; and how we make NHS work more attractive to ensure NHS dentists are incentivised to deliver more NHS care.
The NHS Long Term Workforce Plan, published on 30 June 2023, sets out the steps the National Health Service and its partners need to take to deliver an NHS workforce that meets the changing needs of the population over the next 15 years. These include a 40% increase to dentistry undergraduate training places by 2031/32. To support this ambition, we will expand places by 24% by 2028/29, taking the overall number that year to 1,000 places.
From 1 April 2023, responsibility for commissioning primary care dentistry to meet the needs of the local population has been delegated to all integrated care boards (ICBs) across England. ICBs are responsible for having local processes in place to identify areas of need and determine the priorities for investment.
The Mid and South Essex Integrated Care Board has put in place initiatives to improve access to dental care for the whole population. The Dental Access Pilot allows dentists to be open outside of their normal working hours to see patients in need, self-referred or referred from NHS 111. Up to 4 December 2023, just under 4,000 additional patients have been seen because of this work. The pilot will continue until March 2025.
Patients who are struggling to find a local dentist can contact NHS England’s Customer Contact Centre for assistance or contact NHS 111 if seeking urgent care.
Asked by: Anna Firth (Conservative - Southend West)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to increase the availability of NHS dental treatment in Southend.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom
Ministers are always keen to discuss issues regarding National Health Service dentistry.
Our plan for dentistry, to be published shortly, will build upon the first package of reforms agreed in July 2022, which included changes to banding and the introduction of a minimum Units of Dental Activity value. Our plan will include addressing how we continue to improve access, particularly for new patients; and how we make NHS work more attractive to ensure NHS dentists are incentivised to deliver more NHS care.
The NHS Long Term Workforce Plan, published on 30 June 2023, sets out the steps the National Health Service and its partners need to take to deliver an NHS workforce that meets the changing needs of the population over the next 15 years. These include a 40% increase to dentistry undergraduate training places by 2031/32. To support this ambition, we will expand places by 24% by 2028/29, taking the overall number that year to 1,000 places.
From 1 April 2023, responsibility for commissioning primary care dentistry to meet the needs of the local population has been delegated to all integrated care boards (ICBs) across England. ICBs are responsible for having local processes in place to identify areas of need and determine the priorities for investment.
The Mid and South Essex Integrated Care Board has put in place initiatives to improve access to dental care for the whole population. The Dental Access Pilot allows dentists to be open outside of their normal working hours to see patients in need, self-referred or referred from NHS 111. Up to 4 December 2023, just under 4,000 additional patients have been seen because of this work. The pilot will continue until March 2025.
Patients who are struggling to find a local dentist can contact NHS England’s Customer Contact Centre for assistance or contact NHS 111 if seeking urgent care.
Asked by: Anna Firth (Conservative - Southend West)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether she has made an assessment of the potential merits of introducing an NHS long term service medal.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson
There has been no such assessment and there is no national system in place for recognising long service in the National Health Service. It is the responsibility of individual employing NHS organisations to recognise any long service by staff members, with most NHS organisations already having their own internal processes in place to do this.
For NHS employees with long term service and who have made an outstanding contribution, the honours system celebrates those who go above and beyond to change the world around them for the better. Nominations can be made online via the Cabinet Office website.
Asked by: Anna Firth (Conservative - Southend West)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether she has made an assessment of the potential merits of mobile dental check-up vehicles on children's oral health.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom
In England local authorities are responsible for assessing oral health needs, developing oral health strategies and commissioning oral health improvement programmes for children and adults in their local area.
The Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) has published an evidence-based toolkit, ‘Delivering better oral health - an evidence-based toolkit for prevention’, for dental teams to support preventive advice and treatment for their patients, including the prevention of tooth decay in children. This toolkit is available at the following link:
OHID has also published ‘Improving oral health: an evidence-informed toolkit for local authorities’, which has, as one of its recommendations, oral health training for the wider professional workforce. This is available at the following link: