Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to help ensure that patients with Parkinson receive regular consultations.

We have delivered an additional two million appointments, seven months ahead of schedule. This includes operations, consultations, diagnostic tests and treatments. These additional appointments have taken place across several specialities, including neurology.

We have launched a 10-Year Health Plan to reform the National Health Service. The plan will set out a bold agenda to deliver on the three big shifts needed to move healthcare from hospital to the community, analogue to digital and treatment to prevention. A central and core part of the 10-Year Health Plan will be our workforce and how we ensure we train and provide the staff, technology and infrastructure the NHS needs to care for patients across our communities.

There are several initiatives supporting service improvement and better care for patients with Parkinson’s disease in England, including the Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) Programme for Neurology, the RightCare Progressive Neurological Conditions Toolkit and the Neurology Transformation Programme (NTP).

The GIRFT National Specialty Report made recommendations designed to improve services nationally and to support the NHS to deliver care more equitably across the country. The report highlighted differences in how services are delivered and provided the opportunity to share successful initiatives between trusts to improve patient services nationally. In addition, the NTP has developed a model of integrated care for neurology services to support integrated care boards to deliver the right service, at the right time for all neurology patients, including providing care closer to home.

Once diagnosed, and with a management strategy in place, most people with Parkinson’s can be cared for through routine access to primary and secondary care. NHS England commissions the specialised elements of Parkinson’s care that patients may receive from 27 neurology centres across England. Within specialised centres, neurological multidisciplinary teams ensure patients can access a range of health professionals, including Parkinson’s disease nurses, psychologists and allied health professionals such as dieticians and speech and language therapists, and that they can receive specialised treatment and support, according to their needs.