Parkinson's Disease: Neurology
(asked on 8th September 2020) - View Source
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 (a) re-establish access to specialist neurology services for Parkinson’s patients and (b) provide guidance to services on prioritising urgent patient unmet need.
No specific assessment of access to health services for advanced Parkinson’s patients during the COVID-19 pandemic has been made. Early in the pandemic NHS England and NHS Improvement advised in-person consultations “should only take place when absolutely necessary”. Providers have been rolling out remote consultations using video, telephone, email and text message services as a priority, including for those with neurological conditions.
To support the delivery of high-quality services for patients with neurological conditions during the pandemic, the Association of British Neurologists (ABN) published a range of guidance to assist healthcare professionals in the prioritisation of services. This guidance can be found at the following link:
www.theabn.org/page/covid19_response
Furthermore, the ABN has now published specific guidance on recommencing neurology services in the recovery phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, including those for people with Parkinson’s disease. This guidance contains assessments on which services and patients require urgent prioritisation, taking into account the severity and onset of symptoms. NHS England and NHS Improvement have also provided a range of prioritisation advice for restarting community services, which set out how to meet the needs of people with neurological conditions like Parkinson’s safely and effectively. This guidance can be found at the following links: