Asked by: Karen Lee (Labour - Lincoln)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will publish the most recent data on breast cancer (a) mortality rates and (b) stage detection rates by clinical commissioning groups.
Answered by Steve Brine
The most recent data on breast cancer diagnosis and mortality are from 2016, and are available in the following table.
Directly age-standardised2 rates per 100,000 population of registrations of deaths from breast cancer (ICD-10 code: C50) between 2012 and 2016, England
ICD-10 code | Sex | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 |
C50 | Males | 0.3 | 0.4 | 0.3 | 0.3 | 0.3 |
| Females | 36.4 | 35.3 | 34.5 | 34.3 | 34.1 |
Source: Office for National Statistics
Notes:
Data on stage at diagnosis for breast cancer at clinical commissioning group level is attached.
Asked by: Karen Lee (Labour - Lincoln)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the financial effect on young cancer patients and their families of the costs of travelling to and from hospital for treatment.
Answered by Steve Brine
NHS England has stated that there is work underway to review the service specifications for children and young people with cancer services. This will provide an opportunity to consider how some aspects of the patient pathway may be provided more locally to reduce the travel burden for patients and their families.
Currently the Healthcare Travel Costs Scheme which is part of the NHS Low Income Scheme allows for patients (and in certain circumstances their carers) to receive reimbursement of travel if they are in receipt of a qualifying benefit or on a low income. The NHS Low Income Scheme has helped 337,000 applicants to receive financial help with their National Health Service treatment.
Asked by: Karen Lee (Labour - Lincoln)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many hospital trusts are providing access to a patient education and support event for breast cancer patients.
Answered by Steve Brine
Information collated by NHS England in 2017 indicates that around half of hospital trusts were delivering patient education and support events for breast cancer patients. However, it is important to note that in the same information collection, almost all trusts indicated they are providing health and wellbeing information and support through various methods, including one-to-one conversations. Additionally, the recovery package, a set of four interventions designed to help patients and clinicians assess a patient’s holistic needs and plan appropriately for their care and support, is being commissioned and delivered in full or in part by many clinical commissioning groups and providers across England.
Asked by: Karen Lee (Labour - Lincoln)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what criteria are used by NHS Trust employees to request proof of an individual’s eligibility to receive free hospital healthcare.
Answered by Steve Barclay - Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
The National Health Service is a residency-based healthcare system, with a requirement to be ordinarily resident in the United Kingdom in order to access NHS-funded healthcare. Providers of relevant NHS services are required to make and recover charges from overseas visitors where relevant services have been provided to them and no exemption applies.
There is no requirement on NHS staff to check a patient’s identification and asking for, or providing, ID is not a requirement of the National Health Service (Charges to Overseas Visitors) (Amendment) Regulations 2017. It is up to providers of NHS care to assure themselves that they do everything reasonable to determine a patient’s eligibility for NHS-funded healthcare. National guidance advises them to be flexible in terms of accepting evidence to demonstrate a patient’s residence or chargeable status, including considering the position of particularly vulnerable patients who may struggle to provide documentation.
Asked by: Karen Lee (Labour - Lincoln)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of trends in the average time that patients waited to receive cervical screening results in Lincolnshire in each of the last three years.
Answered by Steve Brine
No assessment has been made of trends in the average time that patients waited to receive cervical screening results.
The NHS Cervical Screening Programme has a quality measure referred to as cervical screening turnaround time. This is a quality measure which recommends that the optimal turnaround time for which a woman should receive her screening result in writing is 14 days from the date the sample is taken. This data is provided monthly and is shared with the cervical screening programme boards and NHS England commissioners that oversee services so that performance and trends can be monitored locally.
Asked by: Karen Lee (Labour - Lincoln)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the recent Jo's Cervical Cancer Trust report Computer says no, whether he plans to undertake a review of the cervical screening IT infrastructure; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Steve Brine
The outcomes of the independent review announced on 2 May 2018, following the breast screening incident, will help to inform IT system proposals for other national screening programmes such as cervical screening. This review is due to report by November.
NHS England and Public Health England are committed to the introduction of a primary human papillomavirus screening test as part of the national cervical screening programme in 2019. This includes working with Primary Care Support England on a new IT system to support cervical screening.
Asked by: Karen Lee (Labour - Lincoln)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans he has to fund patient access to Ibrutinib.
Answered by Steve Brine
NHS England has advised that, since January 2017, it has commissioned ibrutinib for relapsed / refractory chronic lymphocytic leukaemia and chronic lymphocytic leukaemia with 17p deletion or TP53 mutation. Prior to this, ibrutinib was funded via the Cancer Drugs Fund.
NHS England is currently reviewing its treatment criteria for ibrutinib and is willing to receive, by the end of July 2018, any further evidence that patients and clinicians may wish to submit on this matter.
Asked by: Karen Lee (Labour - Lincoln)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the press release entitled PM to announce new research and funding in drive to fight prostate cancer, published by the Prime Minister's Office on 10 April 2018, whether the £75 million for prostate cancer research funding will be ring-fenced and spent only on prostate cancer research; and whether there are plans to invite bids for research funding restricted to prostate cancer.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
The £75 million announced in April for prostate cancer research will be spent through the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) over the next five years. This investment will continue to fund and support innovative new research within the NIHR’s research infrastructure, particularly the NIHR Biomedical Research Centres. It will also fund the NIHR Clinical Research Network to support delivery and recruitment into prostate cancer research and trials funded by partner research funders including charities; and fund prostate cancer research projects and trials under the NIHR research programmes such as the Health Technology Assessment programme.
High-quality research proposals on prostate cancer are welcome across all relevant NIHR funding streams. We anticipate that researchers will continue to submit such proposals. As with other Government funders of health research, the NIHR does not allocate funding for specific disease areas. The level of research spend in a particular area, such as prostate cancer, is driven by factors including scientific potential and the number and scale of successful funding applications.
Asked by: Karen Lee (Labour - Lincoln)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the potential implications for the effectiveness of the National Cancer Patient Experience Survey of moving data from NHS trusts to (a) a central point of collection within the NHS and (b) an external survey provider.
Answered by Steve Brine
Since its inception, the Cancer Patient Experience Survey has followed the same model – whereby trusts provide contact information for those patients eligible to receive the survey. This information is passed to a centrally procured external survey supplier who then runs the survey, receives survey responses from patients and produces the national set of results (with support from central analytical colleagues, particularly in terms of quality assurance of the output). There are no current plans to change the model.
Asked by: Karen Lee (Labour - Lincoln)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether private clinics will be used to carry out additional mammograms following the failure to invite women aged 68 to 71 to breast screening appointments; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Steve Brine
NHS England is taking major steps to put in place additional capacity of screening services to respond to the breast screening incident working with existing staff, including over evenings and weekends, and advise that they are also working closely with all local services and commissioners to ensure that they can co-ordinate any extra screening required across the programme.
NHS England has advised that private capacity will only be used if necessary and where it meets national standards.