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 support people with pulmonary hypertension.

NHS England commissions a national Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension (PAH) service with six adult centres and one children’s service.

The services are required to meet the standards set out in the national service specifications which describe the teams and service are organised, including shared care arrangements. These clinical teams support patients through diagnosis, treatment and ongoing care. These policies are on the NHS England website at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/commissioning/spec-services/npc-crg/group-a/a01/

NHS England as a commissioner sets the model of service it expects hospitals to deliver for specialised PAH services. This is monitored through contractual processes. This states for PAH that as well as medical expertise other support, including nurse specialists, supportive care, shared care arrangements and palliative care will be available. If more detail is required on specific types of support that is provided, this would need to be sought from hospitals or from clinical commissioning groups as commissioners of non-specialised parts of the pathway