A and E and Ambulance Services

Mark Hoban Excerpts

Thursday 18th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

We have enacted, or started to enact, every single one of them. Some of them take a bit longer—the contracts for A and E consultants, for example, which we want to ensure are attractive enough to encourage people to want to become A and E consultants. I am pleased to say that we have made some progress on that and are now getting the recruits coming into A and E that we want to see. Other things are starting to happen this winter—more co-location of GP services at A and E front doors and better discharging procedures from hospitals. We have been working very closely with the College of Emergency Medicine, which has been a great help to us in devising these winter plans.

[Mr Mark Hoban (Fareham) (Con)]

Last Friday, my hon. Friends the Members for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt) and for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) and I met leaders of the health and social care system in south-east Hampshire to discuss how it is dealing with the operational challenges it faces. May I commend to my right hon. Friend the model it is using—of working together to prevent unnecessary admissions, ensuring a safe and speedy assessment of those who turn up at A and E and also issuing a prompt discharge of those who are medically fit to return to their own homes?

[Mr Hunt]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I commend what is happening in his constituency. He will be pleased to know that this is beginning to happen all over the country. The heart of the long-term solution is to have people in the social care system, people in primary care and people in hospitals to see themselves as part of one system, in which people are properly flowing between different parts of the system in the way that is right for them, ignoring organisational or institutional barriers. Where that happens, we are making good progress and we are getting the right performance in A and Es.