Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Tuesday 15th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Dr Poulter]

The hon. Lady rightly highlights that there are challenges ensuring registration with GPs, particularly in areas with large migrant population groups. In some parts of London, each year as many as one third of patients move and change GP surgeries. This is a big challenge and we are encouraging local hospitals to make sure that people who turn up at A and Es inappropriately subsequently register with a GP.

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

14. What his policy is on community hospitals.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Dr Daniel Poulter)]

The Government are committed to supporting the NHS to work better by extending best practice on improving discharge from acute hospitals and increasing access to care and treatment in the community. Community hospitals play a valuable role in this process.

[Miss McIntosh]

I welcome my hon. Friend’s reply. Will he give an assurance that going forward there will always be a place for community hospitals in respect of palliative and rehab care, which can be more easily delivered in one place?

[Dr Poulter]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Community hospitals can provide a good focus for palliative care, respite care, intermediate care and step-up and step-down care close to home, particularly for people in rural communities who may otherwise have to travel very long distances to attend hospitals. I hope the community hospitals in my hon. Friend’s constituency will have a long and vibrant future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hunt]

The decision has been taken, but we have made it absolutely clear that we will not proceed with implementing it until there is sufficient capacity in the area, particularly at Queen’s hospital in Romford, to cope with any additional pressures caused by it, and that undertaking remains.

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

T5. The NHS has confirmed that North Yorkshire is the only part of the country that will inherit a £19 million debt, which has to be carried by the new clinical commissioning groups. That was the situation we were promised we would never be in. What is the Secretary of State going to do to urgently address the chronic underfunding of rural areas for the NHS in North Yorkshire?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Dr Daniel Poulter)]

My hon. Friend and I have previously discussed this matter, and she is right to highlight that there are particular challenges to address in rural areas, in terms of both distances to travel and an ageing population requiring considerable health care resources. That will of course be a matter for the NHS Commissioning Board to examine when it considers future funding allocations.