Asked by: Mohammad Yasin (Labour - Bedford)
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 adequacy of the speciality staff workforce in the NHS (a) throughout the UK and (b) in regions with high vacancy rates.
Answered by Stephen Hammond
The Government has already committed to funding for universities to offer an extra 1,500 undergraduate medical school places for domestic students. The first 630 places were taken up in September 2018 and the remaining additional places will have been made available by universities by 2020/21. By 2020, five new medical schools will have opened in England to help deliver the expansion.
The NHS Long Term Plan set out the need to ensure a sustainable overall balance between supply and demand across all staff groups. For doctors, it also focussed on reducing geographical and specialty imbalances. Subsequently, the interim NHS People Plan set out the action we will take now and over the long term to meet the challenges of supply, reform, culture and leadership, and changes in demand for health care. Actions include reviewing what further expansion in undergraduate medical places will be needed, in light of future plans made locally by sustainability and transformation partnerships and integrated care systems; and the establishment of a national programme board to address geographic and specialty shortages in doctors.
Asked by: Mohammad Yasin (Labour - Bedford)
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 increase the number of medical school places to help create a sustainable workforce.
Answered by Stephen Hammond
The Government has already committed to funding for universities to offer an extra 1,500 undergraduate medical school places for domestic students. The first 630 places were taken up in September 2018 and the remaining additional places will have been made available by universities by 2020/21. By 2020, five new medical schools will have opened in England to help deliver the expansion.
The NHS Long Term Plan set out the need to ensure a sustainable overall balance between supply and demand across all staff groups. For doctors, it also focussed on reducing geographical and specialty imbalances. Subsequently, the interim NHS People Plan set out the action we will take now and over the long term to meet the challenges of supply, reform, culture and leadership, and changes in demand for health care. Actions include reviewing what further expansion in undergraduate medical places will be needed, in light of future plans made locally by sustainability and transformation partnerships and integrated care systems; and the establishment of a national programme board to address geographic and specialty shortages in doctors.
Asked by: Mohammad Yasin (Labour - Bedford)
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 merits of introducing mandatory cardiovascular screening for anyone participating in organised sport.
Answered by Seema Kennedy
The United Kingdom National Screening Committee (UK NSC) has opened its three month public consultation on screening to prevent Sudden Cardiac Death (SCD) in young people, ages 12-39. The consultation will close on 7 September and welcomes input from individuals and organisations. Further information about the consultation and how to participate can be found at the following link:
https://legacyscreening.phe.org.uk/suddencardiacdeath
The UK NSC last reviewed screening for SCD in young people, ages 12-39, in 2015 and it was recommended that screening should not be offered.
The UK NSC is an independent committee that advises Ministers and the National Health Service in all four UK countries on all aspects of screening. Using research evidence, pilot programmes and economic evaluation, the Committee assesses the evidence for national screening programmes against a set of internationally recognised criteria covering: the condition; the test; the treatment options; and the effectiveness and acceptability of the screening programme.
Asked by: Mohammad Yasin (Labour - Bedford)
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 implications for his Department's policies of the findings on recruitment of the Royal College of Physicians annual census Focus on physicians: 2017–18 census (UK consultants and higher specialty trainees).
Answered by Stephen Hammond
The Royal College of Physicians’ report ‘Focus on physicians: census of consultant physicians and higher specialty trainees 2017-18’ is a valuable source of information for medical workforce planning in England. The NHS Long Term Plan and the subsequent interim NHS People Plan set out the action we will take now and over the long term to meet the challenges of supply, reform, culture and leadership. They were developed on the basis of the advice and experience of stakeholders including the Royal College of Physicians. Since the report was published in June 2018 action has been taken to address some of the findings of the report.
The Government has already committed to funding for universities to offer an extra 1,500 undergraduate medical school places opening five new medical schools across England in the process. The interim NHS People Plan sets out that we will review what further expansion in undergraduate medical places will be needed, in light of future plans made locally by sustainability and transformation partnerships and integrated care systems.
The NHS Long Term Plan included the commitment to exploring the potential to expand the Medical Training Initiative so that more medical trainees from developed and developing countries can spend time working and learning in the National Health Service. The Plan also commits to a national programme board, which will be established to address geographic and specialty shortages in doctors, including developing new staffing models for rural and coastal hospitals and planning for the distribution of the increased medical graduates entering the NHS from 2022/23.
Asked by: Mohammad Yasin (Labour - Bedford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to ensure that an adequate number of doctors are trained to meet future needs.
Answered by Stephen Hammond
The interim NHS People Plan sets out the action we will take now and over the long term to meet the challenges of supply, reform, culture and leadership, and changes in demand for health care.
The Government has already committed to having 5,000 additional doctors in general practice, and to funding for universities to offer an extra 1,500 undergraduate medical school places. The first 630 places were taken up in September 2018 and the remaining additional places will have been made available by 2020/21. By 2020, five new medical schools will have opened in England to help deliver the expansion.
Asked by: Mohammad Yasin (Labour - Bedford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to encourage BAME people to sign up to the stem cell donor register.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
The Department funds Anthony Nolan and NHS Blood Transplant to improve equity of access to unrelated donor stem cell transplantation for Black, Asian, and minority ethnic (BAME) patients through targeted recruitment to the Anthony Nolan and the NHS Stem Cell Registry.
More than £20 million has been provided to NHS Blood and Transplant and Anthony Nolan for stem cell donation since 2015, and this funding includes very specific stipulations about the numbers of newly registered bone marrow donors, and the proportion of umbilical cords stored in the UK Cord Blood Bank that must be from BAME backgrounds (35-40%). This includes specific funding to support recruitment of donors from BAME backgrounds.
In 2016 NHS Blood Transplant began a partnership with Team Margot and launched the Golden Ticket campaign. This project created 35,000 Golden Tickets which were circulated to existing BAME and mixed-race blood donors to encourage them to sign on to the stem cell donor register.
Asked by: Mohammad Yasin (Labour - Bedford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, for what reason the National Survey of Bereaved people was discontinued; and whether he has plans to collect that data by a different method.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
In the 2017-18 Mandate to NHS England we asked for the identification of metrics to assess quality and choice in end of life care. As a result, we will shortly have in place a new indicator to measure the proportion of people with three or more emergency admissions in their final 90 days of life, which will help us assess how well patients with end of life care needs are being supported by local health and care services out of hospital and in the community. The 2017-18 objective was met and therefore did not feature in the 2018-19 Mandate.
For 2018-19, the Government’s Mandate asks NHS England to increase the percentage of people identified as likely to be in their last year of life, so that their end of life care can be improved by personalising it according to their needs and preferences at an earlier stage. NHS England will use the Quality Outcomes Framework to demonstrate such an increase by looking at the percentage of people who are on the general practitioner register for supportive and palliative care, and consider expected levels based on local populations Currently the national English average is 0.37%, it is anticipated this figure will increase in the 2018/19 period. Further work will also be undertaken to develop indicators that will enable NHS England to scrutinise the effectiveness of local health economies in delivering choice and quality in end of life care.
Since 2012 the National Survey of Bereaved People (VOICES) survey has provided valuable insight into the quality of care delivered to people in the last three months of their lives, highlighting variations in the quality of care delivered in different areas of the country and to different groups of patients. Following publication of the last set of survey results in June 2016, NHS England held a consultation on the future of the VOICES survey to seek views on the approach and relevance of the survey to ensure that it remained fit for purpose. Whilst the response showed that the VOICES survey remained a valuable tool, key amongst its findings were that the majority of respondents indicated that the VOICES survey would be more helpful if the sample size were made large enough to report at a local commissioner level.
Following this, work was undertaken to revise the survey and consider approaches to a larger sample size and then put in place arrangements to re-commission the VOICES survey. NHS England has been involved in discussions with the Office for National Statistics, which collects the death registration data used to identify survey recipients, about arrangements for access to the data for the new survey. Changes to the safeguarding arrangements on data-sharing, designed to ensure any concerns about care raised via the survey can be appropriately investigated, have resulted in delays to commencing the new VOICES survey. Work is ongoing to resolve this matter.
Asked by: Mohammad Yasin (Labour - Bedford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, for what reason the commitment to identify metrics to assess quality and choice in end of life care in the Government's mandate to NHS England for 2017-18 was not included in the Government's mandate to NHS England for 2018-19.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
In the 2017-18 Mandate to NHS England we asked for the identification of metrics to assess quality and choice in end of life care. As a result, we will shortly have in place a new indicator to measure the proportion of people with three or more emergency admissions in their final 90 days of life, which will help us assess how well patients with end of life care needs are being supported by local health and care services out of hospital and in the community. The 2017-18 objective was met and therefore did not feature in the 2018-19 Mandate.
For 2018-19, the Government’s Mandate asks NHS England to increase the percentage of people identified as likely to be in their last year of life, so that their end of life care can be improved by personalising it according to their needs and preferences at an earlier stage. NHS England will use the Quality Outcomes Framework to demonstrate such an increase by looking at the percentage of people who are on the general practitioner register for supportive and palliative care, and consider expected levels based on local populations Currently the national English average is 0.37%, it is anticipated this figure will increase in the 2018/19 period. Further work will also be undertaken to develop indicators that will enable NHS England to scrutinise the effectiveness of local health economies in delivering choice and quality in end of life care.
Since 2012 the National Survey of Bereaved People (VOICES) survey has provided valuable insight into the quality of care delivered to people in the last three months of their lives, highlighting variations in the quality of care delivered in different areas of the country and to different groups of patients. Following publication of the last set of survey results in June 2016, NHS England held a consultation on the future of the VOICES survey to seek views on the approach and relevance of the survey to ensure that it remained fit for purpose. Whilst the response showed that the VOICES survey remained a valuable tool, key amongst its findings were that the majority of respondents indicated that the VOICES survey would be more helpful if the sample size were made large enough to report at a local commissioner level.
Following this, work was undertaken to revise the survey and consider approaches to a larger sample size and then put in place arrangements to re-commission the VOICES survey. NHS England has been involved in discussions with the Office for National Statistics, which collects the death registration data used to identify survey recipients, about arrangements for access to the data for the new survey. Changes to the safeguarding arrangements on data-sharing, designed to ensure any concerns about care raised via the survey can be appropriately investigated, have resulted in delays to commencing the new VOICES survey. Work is ongoing to resolve this matter.
Asked by: Mohammad Yasin (Labour - Bedford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what progress has made on the commitment in the mandate to NHS England for 2017-18 to identify metrics to assess quality and choice in end of life care.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
In the 2017-18 Mandate to NHS England we asked for the identification of metrics to assess quality and choice in end of life care. As a result, we will shortly have in place a new indicator to measure the proportion of people with three or more emergency admissions in their final 90 days of life, which will help us assess how well patients with end of life care needs are being supported by local health and care services out of hospital and in the community. The 2017-18 objective was met and therefore did not feature in the 2018-19 Mandate.
For 2018-19, the Government’s Mandate asks NHS England to increase the percentage of people identified as likely to be in their last year of life, so that their end of life care can be improved by personalising it according to their needs and preferences at an earlier stage. NHS England will use the Quality Outcomes Framework to demonstrate such an increase by looking at the percentage of people who are on the general practitioner register for supportive and palliative care, and consider expected levels based on local populations Currently the national English average is 0.37%, it is anticipated this figure will increase in the 2018/19 period. Further work will also be undertaken to develop indicators that will enable NHS England to scrutinise the effectiveness of local health economies in delivering choice and quality in end of life care.
Since 2012 the National Survey of Bereaved People (VOICES) survey has provided valuable insight into the quality of care delivered to people in the last three months of their lives, highlighting variations in the quality of care delivered in different areas of the country and to different groups of patients. Following publication of the last set of survey results in June 2016, NHS England held a consultation on the future of the VOICES survey to seek views on the approach and relevance of the survey to ensure that it remained fit for purpose. Whilst the response showed that the VOICES survey remained a valuable tool, key amongst its findings were that the majority of respondents indicated that the VOICES survey would be more helpful if the sample size were made large enough to report at a local commissioner level.
Following this, work was undertaken to revise the survey and consider approaches to a larger sample size and then put in place arrangements to re-commission the VOICES survey. NHS England has been involved in discussions with the Office for National Statistics, which collects the death registration data used to identify survey recipients, about arrangements for access to the data for the new survey. Changes to the safeguarding arrangements on data-sharing, designed to ensure any concerns about care raised via the survey can be appropriately investigated, have resulted in delays to commencing the new VOICES survey. Work is ongoing to resolve this matter.
Asked by: Mohammad Yasin (Labour - Bedford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what targets have for the 2018-19 mandate to NHS England to increase the proportion of people identified as likely to be in their last year of life.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
In the 2017-18 Mandate to NHS England we asked for the identification of metrics to assess quality and choice in end of life care. As a result, we will shortly have in place a new indicator to measure the proportion of people with three or more emergency admissions in their final 90 days of life, which will help us assess how well patients with end of life care needs are being supported by local health and care services out of hospital and in the community. The 2017-18 objective was met and therefore did not feature in the 2018-19 Mandate.
For 2018-19, the Government’s Mandate asks NHS England to increase the percentage of people identified as likely to be in their last year of life, so that their end of life care can be improved by personalising it according to their needs and preferences at an earlier stage. NHS England will use the Quality Outcomes Framework to demonstrate such an increase by looking at the percentage of people who are on the general practitioner register for supportive and palliative care, and consider expected levels based on local populations Currently the national English average is 0.37%, it is anticipated this figure will increase in the 2018/19 period. Further work will also be undertaken to develop indicators that will enable NHS England to scrutinise the effectiveness of local health economies in delivering choice and quality in end of life care.
Since 2012 the National Survey of Bereaved People (VOICES) survey has provided valuable insight into the quality of care delivered to people in the last three months of their lives, highlighting variations in the quality of care delivered in different areas of the country and to different groups of patients. Following publication of the last set of survey results in June 2016, NHS England held a consultation on the future of the VOICES survey to seek views on the approach and relevance of the survey to ensure that it remained fit for purpose. Whilst the response showed that the VOICES survey remained a valuable tool, key amongst its findings were that the majority of respondents indicated that the VOICES survey would be more helpful if the sample size were made large enough to report at a local commissioner level.
Following this, work was undertaken to revise the survey and consider approaches to a larger sample size and then put in place arrangements to re-commission the VOICES survey. NHS England has been involved in discussions with the Office for National Statistics, which collects the death registration data used to identify survey recipients, about arrangements for access to the data for the new survey. Changes to the safeguarding arrangements on data-sharing, designed to ensure any concerns about care raised via the survey can be appropriately investigated, have resulted in delays to commencing the new VOICES survey. Work is ongoing to resolve this matter.