Oral Answers to Questions

Nick Harvey Excerpts
Tuesday 15th January 2013

(11 years, 3 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Dan Poulter Portrait Dr Poulter
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The hon. Lady is right to raise concerns about specific groups. The direction of travel in reducing readmission rates has to be the right thing; far too many patients were bouncing back to hospital when they would have been better looked after in the community. The longer term answer for some conditions, such as heart disease and possibly sickle cell and thalassaemia, may be year-of-care tariffs, which we are looking at very closely, as is the NHS Commissioning Board.

Nick Harvey Portrait Sir Nick Harvey (North Devon) (LD)
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The Secretary of State just referred to the new strategic clinical networks. As the cancer networks are merged with them, what safeguards are there to stem the loss of expertise in cancer and what specialist support will be available to CCGs trying to achieve the targets we have heard about?