Epilepsy Services

Debate between Paul Burstow and Teresa Pearce

Tuesday 12th October 2010 Westminster Hall

[Paul Burstow]

The Government proposals include a national quality board that will be responsible for considering potential areas for quality standards, and NICE will take that work forward. There is already a number of standards in the national service framework, but I will certainly give further thought to the hon. Gentleman’s point.

A number of hon. Members have mentioned information, and the Government want to give patients and the public all the information that they need to make informed choices and hold the NHS to account. We will shortly be launching a new information strategy to improve radically the range and quality of information available to patients, professionals and the public, so that there is increased transparency and strengthened accountability in the system.

[Teresa Pearce (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)]

The Minister mentioned information for patients, but one area of concern that has not been mentioned today is that involving women of child-bearing age. Currently, such women are meant to be counselled by their GPs, but sometimes that counselling is patchy or non-existent. One successful drug creates a significant increase in baby malformations, so a woman who finds herself pregnant must decide whether to carry on taking the drug with a risk to the baby, or stop taking the drug with a risk to herself. The risk of maternal death is almost 10 times higher for women with epilepsy. What can be done to make GPs take seriously the role they have when women are facing that terrible decision?

[Paul Burstow]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for raising that point. In the proposed quality and outcomes framework for 2011-12, NICE has recommended a new indicator to encourage more GPs to talk to women with epilepsy about the drug risk during pregnancy. I hope that that will focus on the point that the hon. Lady has rightly raised.

Patients should be able to check up on local services right down to the performance of individual consultant teams, so that they can, if necessary, vote with their feet. That not only gives patients more control, but it exerts pressure on different parts of the NHS to make continuous improvements. On a professional level, it is important to ensure that there is better recording and sharing of information about services.

My hon. Friend the Member for Southport and the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith) talked about the lack of information about neurological services at local level. I can tell them that the Department has developed a reference data set for local commissioners to use. That will give them a standard set of information to request from local providers about the different stages of care for someone with a neurological condition. Reference has been made to a dearth of data. I can tell hon. Members that there are data relating to the primary reasons for hospital admissions, readmission rates, average lengths of stay, out-patients, first to review rates and programme spend for neurology through the payment by result rates. All that information is on NHS Comparators, which is part of the NHS website. It is an online tool that presents all that information in a way that is accessible not just to professionals, but to the third sector. One of the challenges that I pose to hon. Members and to organisations with an interest in this field is to make more use of NHS Comparators, because it is a valuable tool for challenging commissioners and holding them to account and for ensuring that there is competitive localism—a real sense of comparing one area to another to ensure that we drive up standards and learn from the best.