Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Dan Poulter and Valerie Vaz(9 years, 9 months ago)
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Dr Poulter
My right hon. Friend asks an important question. We can of course support the existing model, and the innovation that comes with GPs being small businesses, and that is exactly what we are doing with the £1 billion investment fund for GP infrastructure and technology. We are supporting those GPs as small businesses to develop better patient services.
Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)
On what is his last outing, will the Minister tell us how many GPs, in addition to those who have retired, have left the profession and how many have gone to work abroad?
Dr Poulter
It has always been the case—it was certainly the case among many of my medical contemporaries—that many people from our NHS go and work overseas for some time. They often come back to the NHS, bringing broader experience and skills. As I outlined earlier, there are now 1,000 more GPs working and training in our NHS than there were five years ago.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Dan Poulter and Valerie Vaz(10 years, 11 months ago)
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Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)
4. How much has been spent on medical locums in accident and emergency departments in each year since 2009-10.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Dr Daniel Poulter)
Staff employment is a matter for NHS trusts and we do not collect that data centrally. We recognise the challenge in recruiting and retaining A and E doctors, who can take up to six years to train. However, growth in the medical work force has kept pace with the increase in attendances since 2010.
Valerie Vaz
I am sure the Minister will agree that it is a grotesque situation where a trainee doctor working as a locum is paid as much as a fully qualified doctor. That is the result of not listening to legitimate concerns during the passage of the Health and Social Care Act 2012, so will the Minister not blame women in the work force or overpaid doctors but do something quickly to stop this drain on public money?
Dr Poulter
I hope the hon. Lady will be pleased to hear that under the current Government we have reduced locum costs to the NHS by about £400 million. That is, of course, good medical practice: it is good for patients to receive better continuity of care from permanent doctors. In A and E, specifically, we have seen the work force grow by more than 350 since 2010.
Health and Social Care (Re-committed) Bill
Debate between Dan Poulter and Valerie Vaz(13 years, 3 months ago)
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Dr Poulter
No, sit down. The hon. Lady should listen to this, because it is important. The point is that doctors and nurses need to be allowed to get on and do their jobs.
A key focus is not just about putting more money into front-line patient care but making sure that we have clinical leadership of services. Form-filling for the sake of it does not benefit patients; what benefits patients is allowing doctors to treat those in front of them. Under the perverse incentives that were created previously, the four-hour wait in A and E means that a patient with a broken toe is just as much of a priority as someone with potentially life-threatening chest pain. That is the problem with the service that we have, and that is why the clinical leadership and focus that this Bill is bringing will be so important.
Dr Poulter
I am going to make a little progress. Other speakers want to contribute, so I hope that the hon. Lady will forgive me for not taking her intervention.
The Bill focuses on integration and looks to improve the care particularly of our frail elderly. There is too much silo working in the health service—in primary care, in secondary care and in adult social services. The Bill seeks to integrate services through the role provided by Monitor in helping to provide an overarching view of value for the patient and through the setting up of health and wellbeing boards at local level. That is intended to provide better integration of adult social care with NHS care, which has not happened in all parts of the country.
The hon. Member for Easington made a very good speech in which he said that care was hugely variable throughout different parts of England. That is because in many areas we do not have properly joined-up thinking about how things are done. For example, hospitals are paid on payment by results, but there is no incentive necessarily to reduce admissions and to provide much more focused community care, which would be so important in improving the care of the frail elderly in their communities and in their homes. The Bill is starting to take the first steps towards that sort of joined-up thinking.
If Labour Members are concerned about this, the point was well made by Lord Warner in his recent comments as part of the Dilnot report. The right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson) laughs, but he served alongside Lord Warner in the previous Government.