Asked by: Liz McInnes (Labour - Heywood and Middleton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, when the results of NHS England’s Diabetes Digital Coach Wave 1 Test Bed in the West of England Academic Health Science Network will be published; and what steps are being taken to replicate the successes of that project throughout the health service.
Answered by Seema Kennedy
Independent evaluations were undertaken for all Wave 1 Test beds, including for the Diabetes Digital Coach Test Bed. The successes and lessons learned from the test beds were disseminated locally by the Test Bed’s project teams and NHS England have published key reports on findings around undertaking evaluations and information governance.
These findings have been incorporated in the design of Wave 2 of the Test Beds programme which is funding a further seven sites, including three sites focussed on the self-management of type 2 diabetes.
The Evaluation Learning from Wave 1 document is available at the following link:
The Information Governance Learning Handbook is available at the following link:
More information on Wave 2 Test Beds can be found at the following link:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/ourwork/innovation/test-beds/
Asked by: Liz McInnes (Labour - Heywood and Middleton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many Diabetes Specialist Nurses (DSN) were employed in each Health Education England (HEE) region and (b) how many DSN training places were funded by HEE in each year since 2009-10; and what steps he is taking to employ more DSNs in the NHS.
Answered by Seema Kennedy
Information on the number of diabetes coaches and diabetes specialist nurses who are employed in each Health Education England (HEE) region is not held centrally.
Information on the number of training places funded by HEE for diabetes coaches and diabetes specialist nurses is not held centrally.
The NHS Long Term Plan commits to continue to support local health systems to address inequality of access to multidisciplinary foot care teams and specialist nursing support for people who have diabetes.
NHS England has made £80 million transformation funding available to clinical commissioning groups and sustainability transformation partnerships during 2017/18 and 2018/19 to deliver a programme focused on reducing variation and improving outcomes for people with diabetes.
£9.8 million has been made available to put in place 30 new or expanded diabetes inpatient specialist nurse teams, reducing the lengths of hospital stays for people with diabetes through reducing medication errors and advising on effective treatment.
Asked by: Liz McInnes (Labour - Heywood and Middleton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many diabetes coaches were employed in each Health Education England (HEE) region and (b) how many diabetes coaches training places were funded by HEE in each year since 2009-10; and what steps he is taking to employ more diabetes coaches in the NHS.
Answered by Seema Kennedy
Information on the number of diabetes coaches and diabetes specialist nurses who are employed in each Health Education England (HEE) region is not held centrally.
Information on the number of training places funded by HEE for diabetes coaches and diabetes specialist nurses is not held centrally.
The NHS Long Term Plan commits to continue to support local health systems to address inequality of access to multidisciplinary foot care teams and specialist nursing support for people who have diabetes.
NHS England has made £80 million transformation funding available to clinical commissioning groups and sustainability transformation partnerships during 2017/18 and 2018/19 to deliver a programme focused on reducing variation and improving outcomes for people with diabetes.
£9.8 million has been made available to put in place 30 new or expanded diabetes inpatient specialist nurse teams, reducing the lengths of hospital stays for people with diabetes through reducing medication errors and advising on effective treatment.
Asked by: Liz McInnes (Labour - Heywood and Middleton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, the Government is taking to ensure that Diabetes Specialist Nurses (DSNs) have sufficient time to support patients with more complex needs and (b) what estimate he has made of the proportion of DSNs’ time taken up supporting such patients.
Answered by Seema Kennedy
The information requested is not centrally held.
Transformation funding for inpatient diabetes specialist nurse teams will serve to increase capacity and time available to support patients with more complex needs.
Asked by: Liz McInnes (Labour - Heywood and Middleton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many and what proportion of diabetes clinics provide access to a Diabetes Specialist Nurse (DSN) phone line; and what steps his Department is taking to guarantee access to a DSN phone line to all diabetes patients.
Answered by Seema Kennedy
The information requested is not centrally held.
Clinical commissioning groups are responsible for commissioning diabetes services and technologies for their local populations including access to diabetes specialist nurse phone lines. They are also expected to take National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines into consideration when making their decisions.
Asked by: Liz McInnes (Labour - Heywood and Middleton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps the Government is taking to ensure that Diabetes Specialist Nurses have (a) sufficient time to take part in Continuing Professional Development (CPD) courses, (b) basic introductory training in the latest diabetes technology and (c) online access to all training and CPD courses.
Answered by Stephen Hammond
It is in the best interests of employers to encourage and support the learning and development of their employees. Any agreements, such as protected study time, would need to be negotiated between the employer and its employees.
Individual health professionals, including diabetes specialist nurses, have responsibility to own and manage their own learning to ensure they meet the continuing professional development (CPD) standards to remain registered with the regulatory body.
The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) require 35 hours of CPD relevant to scope of practice as a nurse or midwife in the three year period since registration was last renewed, or joining the register. The NMC does not prescribe any particular type of CPD, it is up to registered nurses to decide what activity is most useful for their development as a professional. A range of free online training resources for National Health Service staff are available at the e-Learning for Healthcare website at the following link:
My Rt. hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care has commissioned Baroness Dido Harding Chair of NHS Improvement, working closely with Sir David Behan, Chair of Health Education England, to oversee the delivery of a workforce implementation plan. This will include proposals to grow the workforce, consideration of additional staff and skills required, building a supportive working culture in the NHS and how to ensure first rate leadership for NHS staff. This will include consideration of the workforce aspects of clinical priorities, including diabetes.
Asked by: Liz McInnes (Labour - Heywood and Middleton)
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 whether the cervical screening programme IT system is fit for purpose.
Answered by Steve Brine
Following the recent cervical screening incident, announced on 15 November 2018, NHS England has set up a multi-agency clinical panel to manage the incident. Capita has put in place daily audits to ensure all women’s files are accounted for and are looking at how automated processes can be used to reduce errors. Additionally, the checks within the Capita call and recall service have been upgraded at every stage of the process and Capita has appointed an independent audit team to carry out a detailed review into operation systems and processes in Primary Care Support England.
Asked by: Liz McInnes (Labour - Heywood and Middleton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of the (a) costs recovered from foreign nationals who have received NHS treatment and (b) cost to the public purse of health tourism in each of the last three years.
Answered by Steve Barclay - Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
It is not possible to provide an estimate of the cost recovered of treating foreign nationals who have received National Health Service treatment as patient nationality is not reported by NHS provider trusts.
The Department does not hold information on the cost to the public purse of health tourism.
However income identified from chargeable overseas visitors, including European Economic Area (EEA) and non-EEA nationals for NHS services for the subsequent years can be found in the table below which is also published in the NHS trusts and NHS foundation trusts annual accounts.
| 2014-15 | 2015-16 | 2016-17 |
Income from Chargeable Overseas Patients (£'000) | 46,797 | 69,246 | 81,402 |
Income from other European Union states for treatment of their citizens (£'000) | 50,045 | 58,572 | 86,066 |
Source: 2015-16 and 2016-17 NHS trust and foundation trust annual accounts
Asked by: Liz McInnes (Labour - Heywood and Middleton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of the number of UK residents that have travelled abroad for medical treatment in the most recent year for which figures are available.
Answered by Steve Barclay - Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
The Department does not hold information on the number of United Kingdom residents who have travelled abroad for medical treatment. The Department does hold information on UK insured persons who have travelled to the European Economic Area (EEA) to receive medical treatment.
There are two routes through which a UK insured person can receive medical treatment in the EEA:
- S2 – the S2 route may entitle a person to UK funded treatment in another EEA country or Switzerland. For healthcare to be funded under the S2 route, a person would need to apply for funding before treatment and there are certain qualifying criteria that need to be met.
- EU Cross-Border Healthcare Directive – the Directive grants a right to purchase healthcare services across the EEA for all EEA-insured residents and to apply for reimbursement from their home system. A person using this route will have to pay the costs of treatment upfront and then claim eligible costs from the National Health Service on returning home. For some treatments, residents in England will need to get prior authorisation from NHS England before receiving treatment. Switzerland is not a signatory and the Directive does not apply there nor for its residents.
The following tables outline the number of S2s issued in 2016, and the number of reimbursements under the Directive.
S2
In 2016, a total of 1,347 UK-insured individuals received planned medical treatment via the S2 route, in the countries listed as follows.
Member State | Number of S2 issued in 2016 |
Belgium | 40 |
Bulgaria | 4 |
Czech Republic | 63 |
Denmark | 1 |
Germany | 97 |
Estonia | 1 |
Ireland | 38 |
Greece | 14 |
Spain | 148 |
France | 131 |
Croatia | 3 |
Italy | 54 |
Cyprus | 0 |
Latvia | 0 |
Lithuania | 31 |
Luxembourg | 2 |
Hungary | 57 |
Malta | 1 |
Netherlands | 13 |
Austria | 23 |
Poland | 502 |
Portugal | 5 |
Romania | 7 |
Slovenia | 0 |
Slovak Republic | 71 |
Finland | 4 |
Sweden | 27 |
Iceland | 0 |
Liechtenstein | 0 |
Norway | 2 |
Switzerland | 8 |
Total | 1,347 |
Cross-Border Healthcare Directive
In 2016, a total of 1,113 UK-insured individuals received medical treatment via the Directive route, in the countries listed as follows.
Member State | Number of reimbursements in 2016 |
Austria | 9 |
Belgium | 17 |
Bulgaria | 21 |
Croatia | 1 |
Cyprus | 16 |
Czech Republic | 37 |
Denmark | 2 |
Estonia | 5 |
Finland | 1 |
France | 84 |
Germany | 55 |
Greece | 32 |
Hungary | 26 |
Iceland | 0 |
Ireland | 72 |
Italy | 15 |
Latvia | 30 |
Liechtenstein | 0 |
Lithuania | 150 |
Luxembourg | 0 |
Malta | 2 |
Netherlands | 11 |
Norway | 0 |
Poland | 408 |
Portugal | 14 |
Romania | 11 |
Slovakia | 27 |
Slovenia | 4 |
Spain | 62 |
Sweden | 1 |
Total | 1,113 |
Asked by: Liz McInnes (Labour - Heywood and Middleton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of the number of people who have visited the UK for medical treatment in the most recent year for which figures are available.
Answered by Steve Barclay - Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
The Department does not hold information on the number of people who have visited the United Kingdom for medical treatment. However, we do hold information on the number of insured people from the European Economic Area (EEA) and Switzerland who receive planned medical treatment in the UK.
There are two routes through which an EEA/Swiss-insured person can receive medical treatment in the EEA:
- S2 – the S2 route may entitle a person to UK funded treatment in EEA country or Switzerland. For healthcare to be funded under the S2 route, a person would need to apply for funding before treatment and there are certain qualifying criteria that need to be met.
- EU Cross-Border Healthcare Directive – the Directive grants a right to purchase healthcare services across the EEA for all EEA-insured residents and to apply for reimbursement from their home system. A person using this route will have to pay the costs of treatment upfront and then claim eligible costs from the National Health Service on returning home. For some treatments residents in England will need to get prior authorisation from NHS England before receiving treatment. Switzerland is not a signatory and the Directive does not apply there nor for its residents.
The following table outlines the number of S2s issued in 2016. We do not hold information on the number of reimbursements under the Directive as it is held by other Member States.
In 2016, a total of 1,126 individuals from the EEA/Switzerland received planned medical treatment via the S2 route, issued by the countries listed as follows:
Member State | Number of S2s |
Belgium | 5 |
Bulgaria | 5 |
Czech Republic | 0 |
Denmark | 11 |
Germany | 7 |
Estonia | 5 |
Ireland | 946 |
Greece | 36 |
Spain | 7 |
France | 5 |
Croatia | 1 |
Italy | 33 |
Cyprus | 22 |
Latvia | 3 |
Lithuania | 0 |
Luxembourg | 2 |
Hungary | 0 |
Malta | 0 |
Netherlands | 12 |
Austria | 9 |
Poland | 4 |
Portugal | 2 |
Romania | 1 |
Slovenia | 3 |
Slovak Republic | 2 |
Finland | 2 |
Sweden | 3 |
Iceland | 0 |
Liechtenstein | 0 |
Norway | 0 |
Switzerland | 0 |