Asked by: Mark Prisk (Conservative - Hertford and Stortford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what the criteria is for (a) premises and (b) IT services related to applications to the Primary Care Trust Fund.
Answered by Alistair Burt
NHS England will publish further guidance about the Primary Care Transformation Fund later this month.
Asked by: Mark Prisk (Conservative - Hertford and Stortford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the merits of bringing forward proposals to extend crown indemnity to GPs.
Answered by Alistair Burt
The Department is working with NHS England on a number of steps that form part of a longer term consideration on primary care indemnity cover. This will: look at the historical position on indemnity provision; consider carrying out a scoping exercise on general practitioner (GP) indemnity; and include wider consultation with GPs, patients, defence lawyers, claimant lawyers, medical defence organisations, the NHS Litigation Authority and commercial insurance organisations.
Asked by: Mark Prisk (Conservative - Hertford and Stortford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, when he expects the technical review of the Carr-Hill formula to be published.
Answered by Alistair Burt
NHS England is working with the British Medical Association’s General Practitioners Committee (GPC), NHS Employers, the Department and academic partners on the review to develop a formula that better reflects the factors that drive workload, such as age or deprivation.
It is intended that the review of the Carr-Hill formula will inform the 2017-18 GP contract. This would be subject to agreement with the GPC. NHS England does not intend to publish the outcome of the technical review until agreement has been reached to apply the revised formula.
Asked by: Mark Prisk (Conservative - Hertford and Stortford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, whether he expects the revised Carr-Hill formula to be applied to GP contracts in 2017-18.
Answered by Alistair Burt
NHS England is working with the British Medical Association’s General Practitioners Committee (GPC), NHS Employers, the Department and academic partners on the review to develop a formula that better reflects the factors that drive workload, such as age or deprivation.
It is intended that the review of the Carr-Hill formula will inform the 2017-18 GP contract. This would be subject to agreement with the GPC. NHS England does not intend to publish the outcome of the technical review until agreement has been reached to apply the revised formula.
Asked by: Mark Prisk (Conservative - Hertford and Stortford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how much of the £1 billion primary care infrastructure fund has been (a) committed to future projects and (b) spent by GP practices.
Answered by Alistair Burt
The Primary Care Transformation Fund is a multi-year programme and the first tranche of local estates and technology projects to improve general practitioner premises and supporting infrastructure across the country are already underway.
Clinical commissioning groups have commissioned the development of Strategic Estates Plans that include the individual estates and technology projects for years two to four, which are due for submission later in the spring. These will then be assessed during the summer and the allocations required to support them developed in the autumn – which will form part of the commitments to future projects.
Expenditure on 2015/16 projects will be finalised with the audit of NHS England’s national accounts, which is expected to complete in July.
Asked by: Mark Prisk (Conservative - Hertford and Stortford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, when he plans to publish the revised Carr-Hill formula.
Answered by Alistair Burt
NHS England is committed to reviewing the Carr-Hill formula which underpins the payments made to general practitioner (GP) practices under the General Medical Services contract. A technical working group and steering group have been established and are meeting regularly.
Whilst the technical work is expected to complete in 2016, the new formula is not expected to impact GP contracts before 2017/18, following negotiation with the British Medical Association.
Asked by: Mark Prisk (Conservative - Hertford and Stortford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will assess the effect of individual funding requests for palivizumab on premature babies at risk of severe complications from respiratory syncytial virus.
Answered by George Freeman
NHS England has advised that it is monitoring the level of individual funding requests for patients who do not meet the criteria for palivizumab. NHS England aims to finalise an analysis of this data in April 2016 and will report its findings to the neonatal care clinical reference group.
Asked by: Mark Prisk (Conservative - Hertford and Stortford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what the average time taken by NHS England is to process (a) individual funding requests and (b) clinically critically urgent funding applications; and whether there is a mechanism to expedite this process for time-sensitive preventative treatments.
Answered by George Freeman
NHS England has advised that from 1 December 2014 to 30 November 2015 (latest figures available), it has taken an average of 17 days to process and respond to individual funding requests (IFRs) and 11 days to process and respond to funding requests for clinically critically urgent cases.
NHS England has standard operating frameworks for the management of IFRs and also for funding requests for clinically critically urgent treatment outside established policy which both outline the process and timelines for dealing with such requests. Both documents are available at:
www.england.nhs.uk/commissioning/policies/gp/
The standing operating framework for IFRs is currently being updated. As part of the changes, the average target timeframe for responding to such requestswill be amended to 30 days from the current 40 days. The system for processing and decision making is also being altered to improve responsiveness as a whole.
Asked by: Mark Prisk (Conservative - Hertford and Stortford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many people were treated using the drug Fampyra in (a) the UK, (b) each English region, (c) each parliamentary constituency and (d) each Clinical Commissioning Group.
Answered by George Freeman
Information on the number of patients treated using a particular medicine is not collected. The Health and Social Care Information Centre has advised that five prescription items for fampridine (Fampyra) were prescribed in England and dispensed in the community in 2014.
Information at United Kingdom, English region and parliamentary constituency level or for secondary care is not available. A breakdown by clinical commissioning group cannot be provided due to the risk that individual patients might be identified.