Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what discussions his Department has had with sustainable transformation plan leaders on the reorganisation of acute stroke services.

NHS England’s National Clinical Director for stroke continues to work with Clinical Networks, Urgent and Emergency Care Networks, Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) and Sustainable Transformation Plan (STP) areas on how stroke care is best delivered to their local communities.

Plans are at various stages of development for reorganisation of acute stroke services around the country but nearly all areas have work ongoing to address the major issues which are to continue to provide high quality specialist stroke care 24 hours a day, seven days a week. These plans have involved CCGs, STP areas, urgent and emergency care networks, clinical networks and providers.

Different parts of the country will need different models of care because of geographical differences and the current structure of services. Major reconfiguration of services will always require careful planning and consultation with the local community and the providers and these processes are taking place.

In some places, this is ‘the London type model’ of focussing care in a small number of centres and equipping these to be able to deliver specialist care 24/7. In other parts of the country, centralisation of care into specialist centres is not feasible for geographical reasons and in these cases alternative solutions, such as the use of telemedicine, will need to be considered. Whatever the case, NHS England is fully committed to ensuring that all patients receive the best quality of care and the most up to date treatments.