Asked by: Helen Morgan (Liberal Democrat - North Shropshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of the availability of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder medication in (a) Shropshire and (b) England.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Disruptions to the supply of medicines used for the management of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have been primarily driven by issues which have resulted in capacity constraints at key manufacturing sites. Information on the adequacy of the availability of ADHD medication is not collected at local level.
The Department has been working with industry to help resolve those issues and expedite deliveries, to boost supplies of these important medicines as quickly as possible. As a result of our ongoing activity and intensive work, some issues have been resolved. Certain strengths of lisdexamphetamine, guanfacine, and all strengths of atomoxetine capsules are now available.
Unfortunately, some medicine supply issues remain for some strengths of lisdexamphetamine and methylphenidate. We are escalating these issues within the manufacturers to ensure action is taken to resolve them as quickly as possible. If any patient is concerned about their treatment, they should discuss this with their clinician at the earliest opportunity.
Asked by: Helen Morgan (Liberal Democrat - North Shropshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the level of underspend was for dentistry in each integrated care board in each year since 2015.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
We currently invest more than £3 billion in National Health Service dental services each year. We are committed to protecting this funding for dentistry purposes, and will ringfence this funding in 2024 to 2025. We will issue guidance to the integrated care boards (ICBs) shortly, through NHS England’s 2024 to 2025 revenue finance and contracting guidance. To ensure compliance against this requirement, and to strengthen oversight of funding that is used to deliver access to NHS dental care, NHS England will meet with, and collect monthly returns from, all ICBs, to establish current and planned spend against the ringfenced dental allocations budget. Data is not held centrally for dental budgets in prior years.
Asked by: Helen Morgan (Liberal Democrat - North Shropshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many NHS appointments were carried out by dentists in each year since 2019.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
National Health Service dentistry activity is measured by the number of Units of Dental Activity (UDAs) commissioned and delivered, and by the number of courses of treatment delivered. Data on the number of UDAs commissioned and delivered is published each month on the NHS Business Services Authority Open Data Portal, which is available at the following link:
https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/english-contractor-monthly-general-dental-activity.
The portal currently holds data from April to November 2023, and data for previous years will be published shortly. Data on the number of courses of treatment delivered in 2022/23 and in previous years is published by NHS Digital, and is available at the following link:
https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/nhs-dental-statistics
Asked by: Helen Morgan (Liberal Democrat - North Shropshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many people attended their GP with a dental issue in each year since 2019.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Our plan to recover and reform National Health Service dentistry will make dental services faster, simpler, and fairer for patients, and will fund approximately 2.5 million additional appointments, or more than 1.5 million additional courses of dental treatment. The plan sets out a number of actions which will improve access for patients, by helping the sector to recover activity more quickly, addressing underlying issues and setting out the action needed for longer term reform of the system. We do not hold data on how many people attended their general practice with a dental issue.
Asked by: Helen Morgan (Liberal Democrat - North Shropshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will take steps with the General Dental Council to improve the registration process for dentists who qualified outside the UK.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
To join the General Dental Council’s (GDC) dentists register, a person must hold: a dentistry degree from a recognised United Kingdom dental school; a qualification in dentistry from a European Economic Area country or Switzerland, recognised under the European Union exit standstill arrangements; or a qualification in dentistry obtained before 2001 from one of a limited number of overseas dental schools.
For dentists with qualifications gained from anywhere else, they must demonstrate to the GDC that they have the required skills and knowledge for full registration. Currently, this means they are required to pass one of the following examinations before they can apply for registration: the Overseas Registration Exam; or the Licence in Dental Surgery exam, offered by the Royal College of Surgeons of England.
Legislative changes which came into force in March 2023 gave the GDC greater flexibility in expanding the registration routes for international applicants, and improving its international registration processes. On 16 February 2024, the Government launched a consultation on further draft legislation that would give the GDC powers to provisionally register overseas-qualified dentists who have not yet met the GDC’s requirements for full registration.
Asked by: Helen Morgan (Liberal Democrat - North Shropshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many people attended an A&E department with a dental issue in each year since 2019.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Dentistry Recovery Plan will make dental services faster, simpler, and fairer for patients, and will fund approximately 2.5 million additional appointments, or more than 1.5 million additional courses of dental treatment.
Our Delivery plan for recovering urgent and emergency care services aims to deliver one of the fastest and longest sustained improvements in emergency waiting times. This includes bringing down accident and emergency wait times for 76% of patients being admitted, transferred, or discharged, within four hours by March 2024. Data on how many people attended an accident and emergency department with a dental issue is available at the following link:
Asked by: Helen Morgan (Liberal Democrat - North Shropshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of reforming the overseas registration exam for dentists.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government has already made legislative changes that give the General Dental Council (GDC) greater flexibility in expanding the registration routes for international applicants, and improving its international registration processes, including how it operates the Overseas Registration Exam (ORE). This legislation came into force in March 2023, and new rules for the ORE made by the GDC under these reforms come into effect this month.
We welcomed the GDC’s announcements that sittings of the ORE part one from August 2023 to the end of 2024, will have triple the previous capacity, and that an additional sitting of the ORE part two will be provided in 2024. Together, these steps have created more than 1300 additional places across the two ORE parts.
Asked by: Helen Morgan (Liberal Democrat - North Shropshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps she is taking to increase access to defibrillators in rural communities.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The treatment and prevention of cardiovascular disease is a priority for the Government. We want people to have the best chance of survival from cardiac arrest, and rapid intervention is central to improving outcomes. This is why the Government wants to increase the number of publicly accessible automated external defibrillators. The Government has therefore announced the Community Automated External Defibrillators (AED) Fund, with a £1 million investment that will increase the number of AEDs within England. We want to ensure AEDs are located where they are needed most. Applications that are submitted for funding are assessed to ensure that each AED is installed in areas where there is a clear need for the device, such as high footfall areas or rural locations with extended ambulance response times. Priority will also be given to applications that are considered a cardiac health hotspot, with high levels of deprivation and low numbers of AEDs within the local area.
Asked by: Helen Morgan (Liberal Democrat - North Shropshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment she has made of the implications for her policies of the demographics of North Shropshire constituency; and what plans she has to take account of those demographics in the ICB budget for dentistry.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
From 1 April 2023 the responsibility for commissioning primary care dentistry to meet the needs of the local population has been delegated to the integrated care boards (ICBs) across England. ICBs are responsible for having local processes in place to involve patient groups, to undertake oral health needs assessments to identify areas of need, and to determine the priorities for investment.
Our plan to recover and reform National Health Service dentistry will make dental services faster, simpler, and fairer for patients, and will fund approximately 2.5 million additional appointments, or more than 1.5 million additional courses of dental treatment.
Our plan sets out a number of actions to incentivise dentists to carry out NHS work. A new patient premium will support dentists to take on new patients, our Golden Hello incentives will encourage dentists into under-served areas, and we will raise the minimum Units of Dental Activity rate to £28 this year, making NHS work more attractive and sustainable.
Asked by: Helen Morgan (Liberal Democrat - North Shropshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment she has made of the efficacy of dental commissioning by Integrated Care Boards.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Following the delegation of its commissioning responsibilities to integrated care boards (ICB) from 1 April 2023, NHS England published the Operating Framework which sets out the accountabilities and responsibilities of NHS England and ICBs, and supports the requirements as laid out within the delegation agreement. This framework is intended to provide clarity on NHS England’s expectations on how ICBs will provide assurance to NHS England that they are exercising the delegated functions safely, effectively, and consistently within legislation regulations and statutory guidance. It will also set out the information that will be collected as part of the oversight of commissioning functions. This framework is available at the following link:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/publication/operating-framework/
NHS England encourages ICBs to reflect regularly on their compliance status, rather than just through annual self-declaration. Both formal and informal touchpoints will exist through ordinary business, and assurance discussions between NHS England regional teams and ICBs are woven into these meetings. To support both ICBs and regional colleagues, NHS England has published a Primary care commissioning assurance framework, which is available at the following link:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/publication/operating-framework/
In addition, Faster, simpler and fairer: our plan to recover and reform NHS dentistry, which was published on 7 February 2024, sets out a number of ways in which we will support ICBs to improve dental commissioning. For example, NHS England will work with ICBs in 2024/25 to identify opportunities to support contractors to deliver additional capacity beyond their existing contractual requirements, up to 110%, and to permanently and unilaterally amend contracts which have consistently under-delivered to ensure the Units of Dental Activity (UDAs) can be released and delivered by other contract holders instead. We have started to publish monthly data on local National Health Service dental activity at the ICB level, including the proportion of UDAs being delivered in different places. We will publish new workforce data early this year to support ICBs with their commissioning function, including employment and working trends. We will also consider publishing data on community dental services, which provide care to the most vulnerable patients, and we will explore opportunities to link to other community data sets and help join-up of local services.