Asked by: John Pugh (Liberal Democrat - Southport)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to correct the TTP SystmOne clinical IT software error present since 2009 and affecting around 26 million patients.
Answered by Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
The Department and National Health Service organisations have been working closely with the Information Commissioner’s Office and the British Medical Association to support TPP to take appropriate action to respond to the TPP SystmOne data sharing issue. This work should be fully implemented by the summer. There is no evidence that records have been lost, mislaid or misused. However, there are already a number of mitigations in place to prevent potential misuse of information:
- Users’ access to records is role based and requires a smart card or password to access the system;
- All record accesses and all registrations are audited and visible to the general practitioner; and
- Patients (via SystmOnline) can now have visibility of when and where their records have been accessed.
Asked by: John Pugh (Liberal Democrat - Southport)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, whether use is made of hypnotherapy within the NHS for conditions other than for irritable bowel syndrome.
Answered by Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
This information is not held centrally. It is the responsibility of local National Health Service organisations to make decisions on the commissioning and funding of any health care treatments for NHS patients, taking into account safety, clinical and cost-effectiveness and the availability of suitably qualified/regulated practitioners.
Asked by: John Pugh (Liberal Democrat - Southport)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, approximately how many (a) British and (b) non-British nationals are employed cleaning the Westminster estate of his Department.
Answered by David Mowat
The Department uses an outsourced provider for cleaning services. The provider employs one British and 11 non-British nationals to clean the Westminster estate of the Department.
Asked by: John Pugh (Liberal Democrat - Southport)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what proportion of staff on the payroll of his Department who work in Westminster are (a) British nationals and (b) nationals of another country.
Answered by David Mowat
Nationality and identity details of appointees to the Department are thoroughly checked at the time of recruitment. However, ’nationality’ is not a mandatory field in the Department’s Business Management System where the details of staff are registered. This means that some staff have not declared with respect to nationality.
All the figures given in the table below are of those civil servants employed by the Department in the Westminster area as of 6 October 2016. These figures do not include contractors, consultants and temporary agency workers or the staff of the Department’s service companies.
Nationality | Headcount | Proportion |
British | 771 | 80% |
Other nationalities | 60 | 6% |
Not declared | 132 | 14% |
Total | 963 | 100% |
Asked by: John Pugh (Liberal Democrat - Southport)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many health visitors were employed in each of the last three years.
Answered by Philip Dunne
The following table shows the number of full time equivalent health visitors employed in National Health Service trusts and clinical commissioning groups in England in each of the last three years.
Full time equivalent figures are used as this is the most accurate measure of service capacity.
30 June 2014 | 30 June 2015 | 30 June 2016 |
8,887 | 10,042 | 9,491 |
Source: NHS Digital NHS Hospital and Community Health Service monthly workforce statistics
Asked by: John Pugh (Liberal Democrat - Southport)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what proportion of contested cases have been successfully defended by the NHS Litigation Authority.
Answered by Philip Dunne
In 2015/16 the NHS Litigation Authority took 124 contested cases to trial and won 75 of them, giving a success rate of 60%.
Source:
Asked by: John Pugh (Liberal Democrat - Southport)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what discussions officials of his Department have had with NHS England on the alignment between the Pharmaceutical Price Regulations Scheme, NICE technology appraisals and funding decisions made by NHS England.
Answered by Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
Officials meet regularly with the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence and NHS England to discuss medicines pricing and funding.
Asked by: John Pugh (Liberal Democrat - Southport)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps the NHS is taking to improve the early diagnosis of brain tumours.
Answered by Jane Ellison
Improving early diagnosis of cancer is a priority for this Government. We have seen an increase of over 25% in general practitioner (GP) referrals for Magnetic Resonance Imaging for potential brain tumours, from 31,000 in 2012-13 to over 50,000 in 2014-15.
In order to continue to support GPs to identify patients whose symptoms may indicate cancer and urgently refer them as appropriate, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) published an updated suspected cancer referral guideline in June 2015. The guideline includes new recommendations for brain tumours in adults and children and young people. NICE noted that more lives could be saved each year in England if GPs followed the new guideline, which encourages GPs to think of cancer sooner and lower the referral threshold.
Following publication of the updated guideline, the Royal College of GPs (RCGP) has worked in collaboration with Cancer Research UK (CRUK) on a programme of regional update events for GPs to promote the new guideline. RCGP and CRUK have also worked to develop three summary referral guidelines for GPs to enable them to adopt the guideline. The British Medical Journal has published two summaries including one for children and young adults and Macmillan Cancer Support has produced an updated Rapid Referral Toolkit. All the summary guidelines and the toolkit are available on the Cancer Research UK website at:
NHS England’s Accelerate, Coordinate, Evaluate (ACE) pilots are exploring new models for delivering a diagnosis quickly and effectively, including piloting a multi-disciplinary diagnostic centre, which we hope will be particularly effective for patients with vague or unclear symptoms, although these pilots are primarily aimed at adults in the first instance.
More generally, improving early diagnosis of cancer was clearly highlighted as a strategic priority in Achieving World-Class Cancer Outcomes A Strategy for England 2015-2020, published in July 2015 by the Independent Cancer Taskforce.
Asked by: John Pugh (Liberal Democrat - Southport)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what support the Government provides to research into the causes and treatment of brain tumours.
Answered by George Freeman
The Department funds the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) to increase the volume of applied health research for the benefit of patients and the public, drive faster translation of basic science discoveries into tangible benefits for patients and the economy, and develop and support the people who conduct and contribute to applied health research. NIHR cancer research expenditure has risen from £101 million in 2010/11 to £135 million in 2014/15 (the latest available figure). Most of this investment (£111 million in 2014/15) is in cancer research infrastructure where spend on specific disease areas such as brain tumours cannot be separated from total infrastructure expenditure. This infrastructure including NIHR biomedical research centres and the NIHR Clinical Research Network.
The Medical Research Council (MRC) is one of the main agencies through which the Government support medical and clinical research. It is an independent research funding body which receives its grant in aid from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. The MRC supports research through a range of grants and personal awards to scientists in universities, medical schools and other research institutes and welcomes investigator-initiated research proposals in all areas of research relevant to human health. Between 2010/11 to 2014/15 the MRC spent £10.9 million supporting research into brain and pituitary tumours, spanning basic discovery science, translational projects to progress treatments to clinics and early clinical trials.
More brain tumour research is needed and, as announced on 18 April, Official Report, columns 258-59WH, I will be convening a working group of clinicians, charities and officials to discuss how working together with our research funding partners, we can address this.
Asked by: John Pugh (Liberal Democrat - Southport)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment his Department has made of the level of variation in waiting times for GP appointments.
Answered by Alistair Burt
We do not measure waiting times for a GP appointment. However, the GP Patient Survey shows variation between different demographic groups in patients’ experience of being able to book an appointment.
The Government is committed to improving access to GP services and ensuring that patients can access evening and weekend appointments by 2020.