Written Evidence May. 15 2024
Inquiry: Climate change and securityFound: policies, strategies and finance that overlook children’s rights and wellbeing, such as their health
May. 15 2024
Source Page: Ms Hayley Young v Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis: [2024] EAT 55Found: held that her symptoms, whilst substantia l, were not due to fibromyalgia or any other underlying health
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps she is taking to end deaths from asthma.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
In the initial report, Major conditions strategy: case for change and our strategic framework, the Department developed a strategic framework on how our approach to health and care delivery can evolve to improve outcomes and better meet the needs of 6 major health conditions, including those with chronic respiratory disease (CRD). As part of the overall strategy for CRD management, we have incentivised primary care, through the general practice contract, to monitor and provide support for those with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and asthma, including through annual reviews, a personalised action plan, appropriate inhaler optimisation and advice on smoking cessation.
NHS England published the NHS Long Term Plan in 2019, which set out the commitments and objectives for the National Health Service for the next 10 years, in relation to CRD. NHS England is working with a range of partners to improve outcomes across the care pathway. This includes supporting local systems to offer NHS funded tobacco treatment services, building on the £2.3 billion investment in additional diagnostic capacity and the establishment of Community Diagnostic Centres; working with key partners to introduce a range of resources and measures that promote high quality and low carbon inhaler use; publishing a National Bundle of Care for Children and Young People with Asthma to support local systems with the management of asthma care and; widening and making access to specialist care through the delegation of specialist asthma services to ICB commissioning responsibilities.
NHS England is also focused on making more respiratory-specific data available to all regions and systems, ensuring there is greater consistency in the use of data and metrics to enable meaningful comparison, and to identify areas that may need additional support for improvement. NHS England also looks forward to the publication of the updated National Institute for Health and Care Excellence asthma guideline later this year and will promote and support its implementation.
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment she has made of the effectiveness of access to (a) specialist care provision and (b) review for asthma patients.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Fewer than 5% of all people with asthma have severe asthma or uncontrolled asthma. For these people, systematic assessment by a specialist multidisciplinary severe asthma team has been shown to improve patient outcomes, for instance with a reduction in exacerbations and oral corticosteroids use, a reduction in health care utilisation, and an improvement in quality of life, regardless of the use of biologic drugs.
Severe asthma services form part of NHS England’s specialised commissioning responsibilities. Specialised respiratory services are subject to joint commissioning or delegation to integrated care boards from April 2024, which will support integrated pathways between specialised and non-specialised services. Recent work contributed to by NHS England, to support capacity within specialised severe asthma services, included the development of a severe asthma toolkit and an Accelerated Access Collaborative on improving pathways for identification and management of patients with severe asthma. Regular asthma reviews, at least annually, are recommended by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence within its guideline on the diagnosis, monitoring, and chronic management of asthma.
The provision of annual asthma reviews is one of the indicators within the Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) for general practices in England. The objective of the QOF is to improve the care patients are given by rewarding practices for the quality of care they provide to their patients, based on several indicators across a range of key areas of clinical care and public health. The latest published data for 2022/23 shows that 62.9% of people on the asthma register received a review in the past 12 months. This has steadily increased since 2020/21, the earliest date from which data is available, as this is when the indicator definition was updated. Further information on the public health profile of patients with asthma is available at the following link:
May. 14 2024
Source Page: Government unveils major package of farming and food sector supportFound: funding and an Infrastructure Grant for Laying Hens with over £20m of funding as part of the Animal Health
May. 14 2024
Source Page: Government unveils major package of farming and food sector supportFound: funding and an Infrastructure Grant for Laying Hens with over £20m of funding as part of the Animal Health
May. 14 2024
Source Page: New levelling up powers to fill empty shops across EnglandFound: an d consideration of health and health inequalities, an agreed way of analysing the health impact of
Written Evidence May. 14 2024
Inquiry: Preterm BirthFound: [retracted in: Eur J Contracept Reprod Health Care. 2023 Dec;28(6):317].
Written Evidence May. 14 2024
Inquiry: Preterm BirthFound: Most commonly, emotional support was provided by a Health Visitor (28%).
Mentions:
1: Danny Kruger (Con - Devizes) international health regulations ahead of any votes at the World Health Assembly that starts next week - Speech Link
2: Will Quince (Con - Colchester) As the Health Minister who represented the UK at last year’s World Health Assembly and the United Nations - Speech Link
3: Ian Paisley (DUP - North Antrim) Can the Minister confirm that the WHO was slow to react to SARS—severe acute respiratory syndrome—was - Speech Link
4: Andrew Stephenson (Con - Pendle) and UK health security priorities. - Speech Link
5: Andrew Stephenson (Con - Pendle) The director general of the World Health Organisation already has the ability to declare a public health - Speech Link