Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Dan Poulter and Eric Ollerenshaw(10 years ago)
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Dr Poulter
It is important to outline that for the first time this Government have put in place, via section 42 financial agreements with trusts where there is a requirement for interim financial support, measures that will ensure that trusts are held to account for delivering efficiencies—for example, reducing agency staffing costs, improving procurement practice, more efficient estate use and land disposal, and pay restraint of very senior managers. I am therefore confident that the local NHS can continue to deliver efficiencies to direct money to front-line care.
Eric Ollerenshaw (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Con)
11. Whether it remains the policy of the cancer drugs fund to provide drugs which NICE has rejected for general use in the NHS.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Dan Poulter and Eric Ollerenshaw(11 years, 11 months ago)
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Dr Poulter
As my hon. Friend knows, we are developing the 111 service further to improve triage and take pressure off accident and emergency services when that is appropriate. I am sure all Members agree that when patients do not need to go to A and E, it is best for them to be treated in the community or properly triaged.
Eric Ollerenshaw (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Con)
11. What steps he is taking to improve the recruitment and retention of specialist accident and emergency doctors.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Dr Daniel Poulter)
That is a long-standing problem. Recognising that emergency medicine is moving towards becoming a 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week service, the Government have set up an emergency medicine task force to tackle the problem and encourage more recruitment of middle-grade doctors to A and E specialties.
Eric Ollerenshaw
Might it be time for us to take a leaf out of the Department for Education’s book, and consider offering scholarships or bursaries tied to doing the job for a certain number of years in order to improve recruitment and retention in this difficult area?
Dr Poulter
Bursaries are already available to medical students to encourage recruitment to the medical profession. As for the specific question of A and E recruitment, at the end of last year I published—alongside the report from the Doctors and Dentists Review Body on the consultant contracts and clinical excellence awards—a report on junior doctors in training. That has given us an excellent opportunity to consider what rewards and inducements may be available to encourage junior doctors to move into A and E and other specialties in which the work is particularly intensive and the meeting of staffing requirements has posed a long-standing challenge.