Asked by: Paul Bristow (Conservative - Peterborough)
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 effect of the covid-19 outbreak on heart failure services in (a) the community and (b) primary care.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
NHS England and NHS Improvement promoted restoration of heart failure services as a priority as soon as the peak of the pandemic’s first wave began to decline. NHS England and NHS Improvement are also working with health professionals to support heart failure patients in the community through the roll-out of the NHS@Home self-management scheme.
NHS Long Term Plan work on improving heart failure services remains a priority for NHS England and NHS Improvement during the COVID-19 pandemic and NHS England and NHS Improvement’s work includes improving the early diagnosis and management of patients with heart failure in primary care. General practice is open and people should continue to access services by phone, online or in person. Practices have been encouraged to deliver as much routine and preventative work as can be provided safely, and supporting patients at higher risk with ongoing care needs.
Asked by: Paul Bristow (Conservative - Peterborough)
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 reduce the variation in the (a) availability and (b) quality of heart failure services (i) before and (ii) during the covid-19.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, NHS England published the NHS Long Term Plan, with heart failure a key priority. NHS Long Term Plan work on improving heart failure services, including reducing variation in the availability and quality of services as well as ensuring early and rapid access to heart failure diagnostic tests and treatment, remains a priority for NHS England and NHS Improvement during the pandemic.
As soon as the peak of the first wave of the pandemic began to decline, NHS England and NHS Improvement promoted restoration of services as a priority, including heart failure diagnostic and treatment services. The restoration of non-COVID-19 services is being prioritised at local level based on local demands. In October 2020 NHS England and NHS Improvement provided service protection plans to regional teams to ensure that critical services, such as cardiac surgery for patients with severe valvular disease, are maintained as far as possible during the second wave of COVID-19.
Asked by: Paul Bristow (Conservative - Peterborough)
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 access heart failure patients have had to health care during the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Throughout the pandemic, patients have been encouraged to come forward for the treatment that they require and urgent treatments continued to be delivered. Throughout the summer and autumn of 2020, the National Health Service has run an ongoing media campaign ‘Help us to help you’ encouraging patients to seek urgent medical help when they are unwell, including clear messaging for patients with heart attack symptoms to call 999.
NHS England and NHS Improvement have promoted restoration of services as a priority, including diagnostic and treatment services for patients with heart failure, as soon as the peak of the first wave of the pandemic began to decline.
NHS Long Term Plan heart failure work, including ensuring early and rapid access to heart failure diagnostic tests and treatment, remains a priority for NHS England and NHS Improvement during the pandemic.
Asked by: Paul Bristow (Conservative - Peterborough)
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 raise awareness of heart failure as a long-term condition amongst system leaders and generalist healthcare professionals.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
To raise awareness of heart failure as a long term condition, NHS England and NHS Improvement are working with Health Education England to develop e-learning to support health care professionals to better recognise the symptoms of heart failure and to improve heart failure diagnosis, management and support.
In addition, NHS Long Term Plan work on heart failure, including raising awareness of heart failure symptoms, remains a priority for NHS England and NHS Improvement during the COVID-19 pandemic. NHS England and NHS Improvement’s work includes improving the early diagnosis and management of patients with heart failure in primary care.
Asked by: Paul Bristow (Conservative - Peterborough)
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 improve the collection of data on the needs of autistic children and adults in the health and social care system.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS Digital started collecting and reporting on autism diagnosis waiting times in November 2019. These are experimental statistics and NHS Digital are working to improve the data quality and completeness of these statistics for future use.
We are reviewing our autism strategy and we are extending it to include children. We expect the revised strategy will have a focus on improved data collection and reporting. We expect to publish this as soon as possible.
Asked by: Paul Bristow (Conservative - Peterborough)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what guidance his Department provided to NHS Trusts on the resumption of NHS screening programmes in response to the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
NHS England and NHS Improvement provided guidance to National Health Service trusts on 29 April 2020, recommending that providers should seek to deliver as much routine and preventative work as could be provided safely, including screening, as some routine invitations or appointments had been rescheduled to protect patients and staff during the pandemic. The guidance is available at the following link:
Asked by: Paul Bristow (Conservative - Peterborough)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many screenings for bowel cancer have taken place in the NHS, as part of the NHS Bowel Screening Programme, in each month since April 2019.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Monthly data is not centrally available, but data on participation and coverage for bowel cancer screening is published on a quarterly basis.
The proportion of eligible men and women aged 60 to 74 years invited to participate in bowel cancer screening who adequately participated since April 2019 (Q1) is as follows:
2019-20 | Q1 | 62.1% |
Q2 | 67.5% | |
Q3 | 64.5% |
Full quarterly data is available at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/nhs-screening-programmes-kpi-reports-2019-to-2020
Asked by: Paul Bristow (Conservative - Peterborough)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many screenings for cervical cancer have taken place in the NHS, as part of the NHS Cervical Screening Programme, in each month since April 2019.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
We do not hold monthly data on the number of people being screened for cervical cancer. Data for the cervical screening programme is collected on an annual basis; the data for 2019-20 (up to 31 March 2020) is not yet available. The annual series is available at the following link:
https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/cervical-screening-annual
Management information is published for the cervical screening programme on a quarterly basis. This provides a count of how many women have been screened in the last 3.5/5.5 years at the end of that quarter, rather than for that quarter alone. The latest period covers data to Quarter 4 2019-20 and is available at the following link:
Asked by: Paul Bristow (Conservative - Peterborough)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the effect of the covid-19 outbreak on the operation of NHS screening programmes.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
NHS England and NHS Improvement did not provide direction at a national level to suspend National Health Service screening programmes in England during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, some clinical services at a regional level rescheduled routine screening invitations to a later date in order to protect patients and staff during this pandemic.
All screening programmes have now restarted and NHS England and NHS Improvement are working with providers to catch-up the backlog as quickly as possible. Appointments for those at highest risk have already returned to normal levels, and most providers have restored routine invitations to normal levels.
Time-critical screening services, including antenatal and new-born screening and screening for those at highest risk of cancers, continued to be prioritised throughout the COVID19 response.
Asked by: Paul Bristow (Conservative - Peterborough)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many screenings for breast cancer have taken place in the NHS, as part of the NHS Breast Screening Programme, in each month since April 2019.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
We do not hold monthly data on the number of people being screened for breast cancer. Data for the NHS Breast Cancer Screening Programme is collected on an annual basis; annual data for 2019-20 (up to 31 March 2020) is not yet available. The latest available annual series can be accessed at the following link:
https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/breast-screening-programme