Cancer: Staffing
Baroness Merron Excerpts(9 months, 1 week ago)
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Baroness Merron
To ask His Majesty’s Government, in the light of warnings by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, what assessment they have made of the risk to cancer patients in England presented by the staffing levels, workloads and working conditions of healthcare professionals.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Markham) (Con)
I express my regret about the cases referenced by the ombudsman. The department is taking steps to reduce cancer diagnosis and treatment waiting times across England and to improve survival rates across all cancer types. Through announcing the first ever NHS long-term workforce plan, we are taking meaningful steps to build the NHS workforce for the future. The Government are backing the plan, with over £2.4 billion of funding for additional education and training places.
Baroness Merron (Lab)
My Lords, the Minister will know that numerous complaints relating to patients with cancer that were investigated by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman included misdiagnosis, treatment delays, the mismanagement of conditions, poor communication and unsuitable end-of-life care. As the NHS is grappling with over 110,000 staff shortages, how is patient safety being compromised by the Government’s long delay in bringing forward the workforce plan? What immediate action will the Government take to deal with the continuing risk to cancer patients posed by a workforce that the ombudsman describes as “understaffed, under pressure and exhausted”?
Lord Markham (Con)
As the noble Baroness says, we see increasing the workforce as a core component here. I was speaking to the president of the Royal College of Radiologists about this the other day, and we obviously need to make sure that the workforce can be as effective as possible at what it does. We are doing a lot of new diagnosis, and 80% of all the medical AI technologies are in the radiography space, which is making a huge difference to diagnosis and productivity. It is clearly fundamental that we get the treatment to these people as quickly as possible.
Prioritising Early Childhood: Academy of Medical Sciences Report
Baroness Merron Excerpts(9 months, 1 week ago)
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Lord Markham (Con)
One of the recommendations of the report is a cross-cutting approach of the kind the noble Lord mentioned to avoid silos. The family hubs we are investing in alongside the Department for Education are trying to do exactly that sort of thing to make sure the healthy start for life exists.
Baroness Merron (Lab)
My Lords, these Benches will greatly miss my noble friend Lord McAvoy. I had the pleasure and education of serving with him as a Whip in the other place. May his memory be for a blessing.
The Academy of Medical Sciences report highlights the importance of continuity of maternity care, which can reduce the likelihood of pre-term birth by 24%. Given that premature babies are more likely to have complications that affect vision, hearing, movement, learning and behaviour, which will all impact later life, what steps are the Government taking to increase the number of women receiving dedicated midwifery support throughout their pregnancies?
Lord Markham (Con)
I agree with the noble Baroness and my noble friend Lady Cumberlege about the importance of continuity of care in the maternity space. We are investing resources as part of the long-term workforce plan to increase the number of people trained in maternity and in this area generally. To give another example, we are investing in family nurses by increasing the number of training places by 74%, because it is understood that we need the workforce to provide all these services in an ever more complex world.
Mental Health Patients: Discharge
Baroness Merron Excerpts(9 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Baroness Merron
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the current level of (1) safety, and (2) patient and carer involvement, where mental health patients are discharged from inpatient settings and emergency departments.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Markham) (Con)
In January, the Government published new statutory guidelines setting out how health and care systems can work effectively together to support a safe discharge process for mental health patients from hospital and ensure patient and carer involvement in discharge planning. This is particularly important given that the National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Safety in Mental Health has found that there is an increased risk of suicide within three days of discharge.
Baroness Merron (Lab)
My Lords, the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman’s recent report found many failings in care around the discharge of mental health patients, with the most common being a lack of involvement of patients, their families and carers. With the pre-legislative scrutiny of the mental health Bill highlighting the need to address this preventable situation, and the Government still not bringing forward this crucial legislation, what immediate steps will the Government take to involve those who are essential to the care and safety of mental health patients?
Lord Markham (Con)
The noble Baroness is correct; the question is of the utmost importance. It is about putting more care into the community—that is why we have put £1 billion of extra spend into community support for mental health. Some 160 local mental health infrastructure schemes are being set up, with 19 in place already, and they are starting to work. The crisis cafés have resulted in an 8% decrease in admissions, while the telephone helpline has resulted in a 12% decrease.
Anaesthesia Associates and Physician Associates Order 2024
Baroness Merron Excerpts(9 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Lord Allan of Hallam (LD)
My Lords, this statutory instrument has triggered a debate that I think is happening on multiple levels. There are two meta questions around the structure of the medical professions, writ large, and the legislative process for establishing professional regulations and updating these over time. This is something on which the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, focuses, and around which the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, has helpfully provided some extra history.
There is one question, which I would call an adjacent question, around the treatment of junior doctors and their frustration at the moment, which they are expressing largely through industrial action. That has been mentioned, quite rightly, by a number of noble Lords, but I do not think that is core to the debate around associates; it is an adjacent question spilling over into this debate.
We have to recognise that the Government have got themselves into a mess over the junior doctor situation and that unhappiness is now having these knock-on consequences. The noble Lord, Lord Bethell, interestingly pointed out that the BMA was unable to come up with examples of the positive use of associates. I thank the Minister for bringing some associates here so that we could hear from them. I thank the consultants in emergency medicine at Leeds hospital who wrote to me and, I suspect, to other members, describing how associates work on the ground and full of praise for the work they do, which has rightly been echoed in the debate today.
There are three questions around the associate roles themselves, which are touched on more in the two regret amendments. The first is whether these roles represent a valuable innovation for the NHS and, importantly, for the patients of the NHS, and so have a long-term place in the system. I hear broad support for the answer to this question being yes, qualified by some questions around the name and the scope, which I will come to shortly. Broadly, I have not heard anybody say that they disagree with the development of these associate roles within the NHS.
The second question is whether they should be regulated by the GMC, as proposed in the statutory instrument. Here I hear a more grudging “Yes”, but still a broad acceptance that the GMC is the only game in town and that it will do a good job. I was interested to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Harris, about the role of the GDC; the comparisons between the GDC and GMC are helpful for us to consider. Certainly, there is a broad sense that the GMC will do a good job if it is the regulator; I am inclined to agree with that.
A particular benefit of the regulation is that it will provide a clear and well-established route for any issues to be investigated. Again, people have raised particular instances in the debate about where things have gone wrong. They will go wrong from time to time with any group of professionals—including politicians, dare I say? It does not matter which group of professionals it is, things will go wrong. What is important for a member of the public is that there is someone they can go to who has a clear and well-established procedure for getting to the bottom of what happened and finding a resolution. I have every confidence that the GMC will provide that for physician and anaesthetist associates and that this will add to any complaints mechanism that exists within individual trusts, which is all there is today so long as these professions are outside of a regulated entity.
Again, importantly, it has been mentioned in the debate that the GMC will provide for a regular review of these professionals to ensure that they continue to remain fit to practise. I think we all can welcome that. I hope the Minister will be able to commit to there being full transparency from the GMC about the activity that takes place on the new associates register so that we can understand how many are coming on and going off it and understand any issues that have arisen, such as the reasons they might have been taken off the register.
The Minister referred to annual reports to Parliament. In 2024, we expect a little more real-time information so I hope he will be able to commit to there being full transparency about associates coming on to that new GMC register and that we should be able to see that much more frequently than simply a report to Parliament.
The third question that has arisen and the one I want to spend the most time on—not too much given the lateness of the hour but enough to try to elaborate the point—is whether the roles are properly defined to avoid confusion and whether they are being used appropriately. Some of this is in the name, which we have discussed already, and I hope the Minister can point to some evidence about there being a lack of confusion.
It seems to me instinctively that there is confusion, partly because “physician” is not common parlance in British English—it is something we more typically associate with American TV shows. The noble Baroness, Lady Watkins, made the point about how we now talk about junior doctors. If you said to somebody, “Do you think a physician associate or a junior doctor is more highly qualified?”, I suspect a lot of people would opt for the physician associate because “physician” has a grandness.
We should be honest enough to test this with ordinary people, not people in the medical profession. That is the test we should apply and if it is true that people think that the physician associate is more highly qualified, we need either to help people understand that that is not the case or change the name. It is really important that we go out there and talk to ordinary people about how they experience those names to understand what is going on. I hope the Minister can commit to that.
More significant is the scope of the role as defined in national guidance and how that is exercised within health organisations in both the NHS and the private sector. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and others rightly raised the scope of practice. I think my most significant concern is not about individual physician associates presenting themselves wrongly but the decisions that will be made by their employers about how to deploy them. We need to look at general practices and large NHS trusts separately. With GPs, in many places we are already operating in a commercial market and in some cases physician associate roles have been growing quite significantly under the additional roles reimbursement scheme which has been operating over the last few years. I thank whoever in the department who is responsible for coming up with a scheme whose acronym is ARRS, which brought a smile to my face when reading the briefing notes late at night.
This issue was brought home starkly to me when I, along with thousands of other people, received a note from my practice telling me it is being sold by a large US corporation called Centene to a British private company, owned by private capital, called T20 Osprey Midco Ltd—very catchy. GP practices are bought and sold en masse between these corporations. I looked into the business of the Centene corporation and found that in 2022 “Panorama” did an investigation specifically into its use of physician associates and came up with some quite disturbing data around the preponderance of physician associates in practices being operated by this US corporation.
I am not a raging anti-capitalist but I do not think it is crazy to think that private businesses will try antod find whichever ways they can to reduce their costs and increase their margins. I would like the Minister to explain how the Government will make sure that these roles are not misused in general practice, especially where they are owned by corporates rather than being operated by some part of the NHS structure. In particular, I would like him to explain how we ensure that practices follow the Royal College of GPs’ position that the physician associates must work under the supervision of GPs and not be used as substitutes. That was something the Minister said in theory. I would like him to clarify in practice how he is going to make sure that happens in this multiplicity of individual contractors who are not NHS employees but operate independently of it.
There is a real concern that if there is a shortage in GP recruitment, that will clearly add to the pressure for practices to think, “I’ll hire the physician associates because I can’t get the GPs”. Again, if we follow the RCGP guidance—I hope the Minister will agree with this—if a practice cannot hire a GP, it has no one to supervise the associate so it should hire fewer physician associates, not more. The hiring of physician associates is contingent on practices hiring sufficient trained general practitioners.
When it comes to NHS trusts, the concerns relate to the decisions that the management may take. This is not intended to be NHS manager-bashing, particularly not with my noble friend Lord Scriven sat behind me; it is more a bit of Government-bashing. If the Government leave trusts with constrained budgets, managers will naturally look again at ways to keep the services running, including using less expensive staff where they can. The risk will be compounded again if the more expensive fully trained staff are not available because there is some shortfall in the Government’s training programme.
I know that the Minister will have to say, “The Government will meet their targets for training doctors and GPs”, but in the real world we have to imagine a scenario where, sadly, they fall short. Again, I want to hear assurances from him that where trusts start heading down the route of thinking that they can hire associates because they cannot get the doctors, the levers will be in place for the NHS centrally to stop that happening and to ensure that associates, who are valued and valuable members of teams, will not be left by their managers to do all of the job, rather than being part of a team with a trained medic leading it.
I hope the Minister can reassure us on the scope in both GP practices and NHS trusts. Again, the SI and this regulation are welcome but there are some questions to answer around how these measures present to people. However, the most significant questions that we may come back to in two, three or four years’ time will be around how individual trusts and general practices have decided to use these roles, rather than any questions around the professionalism or effectiveness of the individuals doing that work, whom we value.
Baroness Merron (Lab)
My Lords, the point that the noble Lord, Lord Allan, has just made about respect for the professionals we are speaking about is a very good one for me to follow on from, because I believe we are at our most vulnerable when we are in the care of the NHS. We have a right to expect to be seen and treated by a competent and regulated professional, in whom we have confidence. This debate has highlighted the sensitivities and practical challenges in trying to get that right. I am sure the Minister will take note of the many valid points that have been raised.
I start by associating myself and these Benches with thanking physician associates and anaesthesia associates for their professional and continued service. I feel particularly strongly about saying that in view of the points raised by my noble friend Lord Hunt and other noble Lords on the considerable toxicity that has been generated about this issue. That has brought bullying and intimidation to these very valued members of the NHS team. I am sure that all of us in your Lordships’ House believe that this is just not acceptable.
In the debate tonight, I feel that I have heard broad agreement that regulation is important—indeed, crucial —to maintaining high standards of patient safety and care, and providing clarity around the boundaries of the functions that can and cannot be performed. Yet, as we have heard, there has been significant delay in getting there when it comes to PAs and AAs, even though regulation needed to come alongside workforce planning. Can the Minister tell your Lordships why this regulation has taken so long?
NHS: Neurology Care
Baroness Merron Excerpts(9 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Lord Markham (Con)
Yes, absolutely. Of course, this is what the CDCs are about as well in trying to get that diagnosis capacity. At the Neurological Alliance forum I was just at, the main thing was needing help with early diagnosis, because getting treatment is key to it all and, also, seeing whether we can sometimes refer people directly to the CDCs so that the GP is not always the bottleneck.
Baroness Merron (Lab)
My Lords, as Lord Cormack was a fellow of Lincoln, as I am, I pay tribute today to his considerable contribution to the City of Lincoln, as well as to this House and to the other place. May his memory be for a blessing.
The Neurological Alliance has expressed concern about the lack of clarity over whether new therapies for those affected by neurological conditions and their changing needs have been factored into the workforce plan. Can the Minister set out how the workforce plan will respond to these changing circumstances both for those with neurological conditions and those with other conditions?
Lord Markham (Con)
I echo the noble Baroness’s comments regarding Lord Cormack.
In terms of the long-term workforce plan, I was talking this morning to the national clinical lead in this area and to Professor Steve Powis. The next stage in terms of the detail is looking at the individual specialties and neuroscience experts are part of that. In the last five years, we have seen an increase of about 20% or so in this space but understanding that need going forward is the next stage in the long-term workforce plan.
NHS Dentistry
Baroness Merron Excerpts(10 months ago)
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Lord Markham (Con)
Yes, it is all about outcomes and output. As I mentioned, there have been sensible moves recently in terms of the contract—the £50 for new patients; increasing minimum levels; and ensuring that dentists get more payment for doing, for example, three fillings versus one. I also agree that some fundamental work needs to be done in this space.
Baroness Merron (Lab)
My Lords, the Minister has previously suggested that the 15 mobile dental vans would be able to address emergency situations as well as scheduled appointments. How will this work in practice, particularly in view of the size of the areas each van will cover? How will the Government meet the immediate need for thousands more appointments for emergency dental treatment?
Lord Markham (Con)
There will be a schedule of when the mobile vehicles will visit each area, with the ability to pre-book so, if someone calls up with an issue, they will know that a truck will come to their area in a week or two’s time. That is the idea, or people can queue to receive those services as well. I hope this will be successful. It has worked quite well in some areas already. The case will prove itself and the 14 will be just the start. We can do much more from that, because we all agree that we need to expand supply.
NHS Dentistry: Recovery and Reform
Baroness Merron Excerpts(10 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Baroness Merron (Lab)
My Lords, I associate these Benches with the thoughts and prayers expressed for His Majesty the King. We wish him a full and speedy recovery.
I thank the Minister for this Statement at a time when NHS dentistry is at the most perilous point in its 75-year history. I found yesterday’s scenes in Bristol quite shocking, where the police were called to manage hundreds of people lined up outside a dentist. They had flocked to a newly opened practice, absolutely desperate to secure an NHS appointment. It is a raw illustration of the state of dentistry where more than eight in 10 dental surgeries are refusing to accept adult patients seeking NHS care and where more than seven out of 10 are not accepting under-18s. Tooth decay is the main reason for children between the ages of six and 10 being admitted to hospital.
It is noted that there is some proposed new investment in this plan, although previous funding has not kept pace with inflation. Good practice is to be deployed to improve access to dental care for those who have not seen a dentist for years, through the use of mobile clinics and some preventive measures. But this long-awaited plan which the British Dental Association has described as “sticking plaster” will not address the systemic problems that have led to today’s state of near terminal decline.
In addition to targeting recruitment of dentists to areas most in need and the preventive toothbrushing scheme for three to five year-olds, we have committed to 700,000 extra urgent and emergency appointments. There does not seem to be anything in the plan to address this latter need. This is key, because surveys have shown that 82% of dentists have treated patients who have had to take matters into their own hands since lockdown, by carrying out DIY dentistry. In 2022-23, across England, 52,000 patients were seen in A&E with a dental abscess caused by tooth decay, as well as 15,000 with dental caries. How will this plan work without the provision of more emergency and urgent appointments?
We know that immediate reform of the dental contract is needed. If in government, we will sit down with the British Dental Association in our first week. The Government’s 2010 manifesto made a promise to reform the NHS dental contract. Yet, this Statement confirms that reform will not be on the cards until 2025. Why was progress not made when it could have been? What assessment has been made of the impact of continued delay on dental health?
I turn to some specific points. Dentists are covering costs out of their own pockets, particularly for treatments that require lab work, such as dentures and crowns. This needs to be addressed. What assessment has been made of this situation and what impact does the Minister expect the plan to have in resolving it?
To what extent do the Government expect the new patient premium to make a dent in the scale of the problem of improving access for new patients? As the plan for around a million new patients is time-limited, there are concerns that this risks disincentivising the long-term treatment of the new patients being brought into the NHS. What reassurance can the Government give that this will not happen? The Government state that the plan will deliver care to 2.5 million, but their own data show that 12 million people in England have an unmet need for NHS dentistry. What about the rest?
The plan also includes “golden hellos” to around 240 dentists to work in underserved areas for up to three years. I hope this will help. Across the UK, 90% of dentists are not taking on new, adult NHS patients. In huge parts of the country, new patients are not being taken on at all, while, in others, dentists are refusing to see a child unless a parent is signed up as a private patient. What sort of a dent will 240 dentists make in this? How will these payments be distributed and in what areas? Perhaps the Minister can clarify whether the payments are for new dentists or are they to be used to get existing, qualified ones to move?
The absence of essential NHS dentistry is to the detriment of the health of the nation. As the Nuffield Trust says, this plan appears to be,
“a much-needed scale and polish when what NHS dentistry needs is root canal treatment”.
I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Lord Allan of Hallam (LD)
My Lords, from these Benches, I also echo our best wishes to His Majesty the King. We hope that he makes a speedy recovery.
In responding to this Statement, I also reach for that familiar phrase of it being a sticking plaster, before heading in the direction of dental metaphors. Rather than a scale and polish, it seems to me that this is something of a temporary filling when, as the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, says, NHS dentistry needs serious root canal work.
I feel for the Minister because I know he cares about dentistry and understands the scale of the problem. He has to sell the temporary filling hard in the hope that we will trust the Government to deliver on the more comprehensive course of treatment that is in the consulting on and exploring part of the document.
There are three elements in that long-term part of the plan on which I hope the Minister can comment further today or later in writing. First, we are told that the Government will ring-fence the £3 billion of NHS dentistry budgets from 2024-25 which have been underspent because of the lack of dentists willing to work at NHS rates. We cannot see this changing overnight, even with what is announced today. How will this ring-fencing work if an integrated care board has still not been able to get the take-up of the contracts that it wants? What kinds of things could they use these underspends for? Will these include additional local financial incentives on top of the ones we are discussing at a national level today?
Secondly, it is important to realise the benefits of people with dental qualifications moving to the UK. I know that the Minister would wholeheartedly agree. The policy document promotes the idea of a provisional registration of overseas qualified dentists while they are waiting for their full GDC registration. The phrasing in the Statement and in the document is quite hesitant. It talks about the Government working towards introducing legislation. Can the Minister give us more information about the complexity of the legislative changes that will be required and their likely timescale?
Thirdly, failures in emergency care both cause severe patient distress and additional work for NHS hospitals. The noble Baroness, Lady Merron, has already pointed out that many children are referred to hospital for emergency treatment. I looked at the description on the Smile Together website—a good service in Cornwall cited in the plan. It says that:
“Smile Together is commissioned by NHS England to provide urgent and emergency dental care to patients who would otherwise be unable to access treatment. Demand for this service is very high and the criteria set by our commissioners is very strict. We therefore offer emergency appointments that are independent of our NHS service”,
and people who call in who are unable to get an NHS appointment and do not wish to wait and try again the next day can basically go private. I am not sure we want to be in a situation where people needing emergency care are left hanging on the phone day in, day out, or face having to go for the private option. I hope the Minister can explain what the Government intend to do around emergency care. I hope he will agree that making sure people can get NHS emergency care will be better for both the patient and the NHS.
A temporary filling is designed to last a few weeks—or months at most—or perhaps until an election. We are grateful for the temporary relief it provides, but we know that more work is needed, and this has to be done urgently if we are to fix NHS for the long term.
Premature Deaths: Heart and Circulatory Conditions
Baroness Merron Excerpts(10 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Baroness Merron
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the increasing numbers of premature deaths from heart and circulatory conditions since 2020.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Markham) (Con)
The Government are committed to reducing premature deaths from cardiovascular disease. The NHS long-term plan aims to prevent 150,000 heart attacks, strokes and dementia cases by 2029, as well as preventing up to 23,000 premature deaths and 50,000 acute admissions over 10 years. The major conditions strategy will look at how best to tackle the key drivers of ill health and increase the healthy years of life for people with major conditions such as cardiovascular disease.
Baroness Merron (Lab)
My Lords, the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities reports a persistently high number of excess deaths involving cardiovascular disease since the beginning of the pandemic, avoidably cutting short more than 100,000 lives in England alone. What are the urgent plans for treating the thousands who are waiting for healthcare? How will the Government extend the roles and joined-up working of a range of healthcare professionals beyond GPs to support the millions who are living with an undiagnosed risk of high blood pressure, raised cholesterol, diabetes and obesity?
Lord Markham (Con)
I thank the noble Baroness and draw attention to my register of interests: I am a shareholder in a small health company that does high-end heart tests for the private sector.
It is fitting that February is Heart Month. The concern that the noble Baroness raises is exactly the one that noble Lords will have heard me speak about. This is precisely the concern that Chris Whitty, our Chief Medical Officer, was worried about during Covid, with missed appointments because people stopped going to see their doctor meaning that we missed things such as high blood pressure and high cholesterol. To tackle the problem urgently, as the noble Baroness suggests, we have put 7,500 blood pressure checkers in pharmacies. They have done 2 million checks to date. We have sent 270,000 blood pressure monitors to houses and have instigated mid-life NHS health checks to look specifically at early heart indicators so that we can try to tackle the problem that the pandemic caused.
Pharmacy First
Baroness Merron Excerpts(10 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Baroness Merron (Lab)
My Lords, I recognise that pharmacies already do far more than just dispense prescriptions and sell items. They are highly trained experts, easily accessible and approachable, with a reach across the entire country. As we saw during the pandemic, they are a highly trusted part of our communities and they are to be commended. But their skills and knowledge are often underutilised, even though pharmacists can take the pressure off GPs and encourage people to seek advice and services that they otherwise might not have sought. That is why we recently announced that we would want to bring NHS out-patient appointments closer to people, and through high street opticians as well.
This announcement will not make up for the 1,000 pharmacies that have closed or the 2,000 GPs that have been cut since 2015. Patients today can be waiting over a month to see a GP, if they can get an appointment at all. When I think back to 2010, I recall that people could get an appointment within 48 hours. Can the Minister update your Lordships’ House on what has happened to the Government’s pledge to deliver 6,000 more GPs this year? What is being done to support community pharmacies, which are already facing a perfect storm with inflationary pressures on running costs, recruitment challenges and an unstable medicines market?
As the Association of Independent Multiple Pharmacies chief exec said, we should not forget that pharmacies are seriously underfunded and that the
“stranglehold of chronic underfunding must be relieved … to ensure our community pharmacies continue to exist and can deliver”
what the Government are expecting. How will the Government ensure that GPs and pharmacies work closely together, given some of the fractured relationships that currently exist over their roles? On delivery, how long will it take to get up to the promised capacity? When will the promised IT systems go fully live across all pharmacies taking part, and how will the public be made aware of the services that they will now be able to get from their local pharmacy?
The Minister will know of concerns regarding the impact on the pharmacy workforce. The concern is that they will just be overwhelmed, which begs the question: why was Pharmacy First not phased in? What is being done to ease the inevitable extra pressure on pharmacies, including in the use of their premises? How will the Government ensure the privacy that we all need? It is not acceptable to be discussing personal matters for all to hear, nor to receive a vaccination that may require the removal or adjustment of clothing for all to see.
Turning to some of the specific services, I note that pharmacists will be able to treat urinary infections, which women suffer frequently, requiring urgent treatment as soon as the signs start to occur. But why is that only up to the age of 64? It is very welcome to get blood pressure checks routinely done at pharmacies, particularly for older people with long-term conditions. At present, many are asked to buy their own assessment machine and report in the results to the surgery, which they cannot do, and not having a blood pressure reading can lead to delays in getting medication. So how will the Government ensure that key data is safely, accurately and speedily exchanged between pharmacies and GPs?
Finally, what is the Government’s plan in the longer term to integrate the increase in independent prescribers, who are being trained as part of the long-term workforce plan? Does the Minister agree that we should accelerate the rollout of independent prescribing to establish a community pharmacist prescribing service, covering a wide range of common conditions? That would support patients with chronic conditions, which is one of the biggest challenges facing the NHS. Does he agree that community pharmacies will have an important role to play in supporting GPs in the management of long-term conditions, such as hypertension and asthma, and in tackling the serious issue of overprescribing, which is responsible for thousands of avoidable hospital admissions every year?
Bringing healthcare into the community means that patients will have greater control and be seen faster, while GPs will be freed up to see more complex cases. From these Benches, we have long argued for a greater role for pharmacists and pharmacies. The NHS should work as a neighbourhood health service as much as a National Health Service, and that is a development to which these Benches are wholly committed.
Lord Allan of Hallam (LD)
My Lords, the holy grail for health policy is a change which improves the service for patients at the same time as reducing the cost of delivering that service. I think we can all see the potential for Pharmacy First to be such a move, if executed well. I have a few questions for the Minister and his answers will help us to understand whether he is on the right path in this grail quest.
First, I understand that there will be a payment per consultation, if the consultation meets criteria that the Government have set, but that there will be a cap on the total budget. Can the Minister explain how this cap will work? Is it per pharmacy or per integrated care board, and what happens if it is exceeded? I do not think that we want people going back to more costly channels simply because of an accounting feature. Secondly, can he explain how the Government will assess value for money in comparing the cost of the Pharmacy First consultations with the estimated savings on the GP and A&E side?
Thirdly, while we are discussing urgent care today, can the Minister also say whether the Government are looking at using pharmacies for approving repeat prescriptions—this was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Merron—for drugs such as statins that people may be on for many years? The current protocol requires them to go back to their GP for regular reviews. Are there any plans afoot to move some of that medicine review process for long-term conditions also into the Pharmacy First programme?
Can the Minister also explain how instructions will be given to NHS 111 services so that they can properly direct people, in light of Pharmacy First now being an available option? It could make a real difference to the pressure on A&E services if 111 moved appropriate cases over to pharmacies. There are concerns that 111 has a natural tendency to be risk averse and refer people to A&E. If we are going to ask it to refer people now to pharmacies, we need to understand how that shift in direction will take place.
Finally, I have a digital question. It is not the one about the joined-up records that we discussed earlier at Oral Questions, as I am confident that the Minister will tell us that the Government are on track for that. What I want to raise is, even when the pharmacy has issued a prescription and dispensed it, at present what happens is that it will then print it off and post it to the NHS Business Services Authority for payment. This happens with all the prescriptions in the pharmacy system at present. My understanding is that the business services authority will then scan them into its system to make the payments—which seems quite farcical in 2024. So I would be interested to hear from the Minister what plans the Government have to get rid of that piece of the equation or to make it more efficient, so that, when a prescribing process happens electronically, it happens all the way through, to the point at which the pharmacy is reimbursed for the work that it has done.
Allied Health Professionals: Prescribing Responsibilities
Baroness Merron Excerpts(10 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Lord Markham (Con)
I suspect that we are starting to get on to the debate we will have shortly on physician and anaesthetist associates. In both cases there is definitely a role for them, because we want to support doctors in the surgery and allow them to train and teach at the top of their profession. Clearly, however, we need to be sure of what such people can do and where they need extra supervision, and that is what we are setting out.
Baroness Merron (Lab)
My Lords, further to the Minister’s reply to my noble friend Lord Bradley, what is the Government’s plan to increase and integrate the number of independent prescribers being trained as part of the long-term workforce plan? Given that community pharmacists are already trained to vaccinate against Covid-19 and flu, will the Government be expanding the service to include the delivery of MMR jabs, in order to help address recent measles outbreaks?
Lord Markham (Con)
First, on the long-term workforce plan, yes, we want to increase the number of allied health professionals by 25% by 2030. We see a lot of that group—some 20%—coming through via apprenticeships. It has been proven just how well pharmacies managed to supplement MMR vaccinations in the Covid and flu space, so it is a good idea. I will need to take that idea back to the department, rather than agreeing to it on the hoof, but I will come back on it because it is an excellent one.