William Mead: 111 Helpline Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateNicholas Dakin
Main Page: Nicholas Dakin (Labour - Scunthorpe)Department Debates - View all Nicholas Dakin's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
(8 years, 7 months ago)
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I do agree that we need more clinicians in primary care. We also need to invest in secondary care, which is why the hon. Lady has a new A&E centre opening in Hull, which I am sure she welcomes. We need more clinicians in primary care so that we can deal with these issues more quickly, before people need hospital care and to spot conditions such as sepsis. This Government are investing £10 billion in the NHS annually in real terms in order to step up the improvement in the services that we offer.
So will the Secretary of State put a higher proportion of clinicians in 111?
We will certainly look at whether we need to have more clinicians in 111. We do have clinicians available in 111. My own view is that it is the separation of the out-of-hours services and the 111 service that is at the heart of the problem that we are looking to deal with, but as part of the review we will look at the availability of clinicians in 111.