NHS: Specialist Services in Remote Areas

Lord Beith Excerpts

Tuesday 11th December 2018 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Beith]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what work is being carried out within the National Health Service to improve access to specialist services in areas which are remote from main hospitals.

[Lord Beith (LD)]

My Lords, despite the temperature, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord O’Shaughnessy) (Con)]

My Lords, NHS England, which is responsible for overseeing the commissioning of specialised services, is committed to considering the centralisation of such services, such as stroke provision, where it will raise clinical standards and improve outcomes. However, in doing so, NHS England is bound by its statutory duty to reduce health inequalities, including for people living in remote areas. A series of adjustments to funding allocations for clinical commissioning groups are designed to deliver that obligation.

[Lord Beith]

My Lords, I am grateful for that Answer. As the Minister indicated, many specialist treatments and emergency admissions now take place in major hospitals for patient safety and better outcomes, but what about the communities that are 50 miles or more from those hospitals? Some patients must travel for three or four hours at a time for follow-up consultations and treatment. Does the Minister recognise that, in remote areas, community hospitals need to provide a wider-than-usual range of services and treatments—such as the chemotherapy we have in Berwick—including follow-up consultations, examinations and radiography, using modern technology to link the patient to the clinician at the distant hospital?

[Lord O’Shaughnessy]

I absolutely agree with the noble Lord that while it is important to specialise those services because they have been demonstrated to deliver better outcomes, we need to make sure that ancillary services can be delivered as close to the community as possible. In preparing for this Question, I was delighted to see that Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust and the county council are building a new hospital in Berwick to provide that sort of care. That is welcome, but we also need to make sure that we protect community hospitals elsewhere in the country and that they can continue to deliver out-of-hospital care.