Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what provisions for increased asthma care are being taken in the implementation of the Five Year Forward View.

The Five Year Forward View makes clear that supporting people living with long term conditions, such as asthma, is core business for the National Health Service and that this requires a partnership with patients over the long term, rather than providing single, unconnected episodes of care.

In order to achieve this, the NHS is focusing on empowering patients and communities. The 2016/17 NHS Shared Planning Guidance requires local areas to produce five year sustainability and transformation plans (STPs). In developing their STP, local areas are asked to consider how they will:

― achieve a step-change in patient activation and self-care;

― embed the six principles of engagement and involvement of patients, carers, and communities developed to help deliver the Five Year Forward View; and

― make real the aspiration to design person-centred coordinated care, including plans to ensure patients have access to named, responsible consultants.

Vanguard sites for the new care models programme, one of the first steps towards delivering the Five Year Forward View, are focusing on developing new ways of working to improve the care provided to patients and local people. The vanguards will consider the provision of asthma care at a local level as they develop and implement their plans.

More generally, NHS England continues to work with Asthma UK and professional groups in both primary and secondary care to improve outcomes for all those with asthma by, for example, underlining the importance of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence’s asthma quality standard in commissioning and delivering good quality asthma care.