Mentions:
1: Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab - Life peer) Government what assessment they have made of NHS England London stating that “anyone with ovaries can get ovarian - Speech Link
2: Baroness Burt of Solihull (LD - Life peer) cancer and trans women can get prostate cancer. - Speech Link
3: Baroness Meyer (Con - Life peer) lack of specific data on the consequences of NHS England’s adoption of gender-neutral language and services - Speech Link
4: Lord Patel (XB - Life peer) So it is correct that only people with ovaries can develop ovarian diseases, including ovarian cancer - Speech Link
5: Lord Markham (Con - Life peer) because we are doing something which applies to them, often in the case of ovarian or cervical cancer - Speech Link
Jul. 19 2010
Source Page: Guidance on commissioning cancer services: improving outcomes in gynaecological cancers. The manual. Incl. appendices. 85 p.Found: Guidance on commissioning cancer services: improving outcomes in gynaecological cancers.
Asked by: Andrew Rosindell (Conservative - Romford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to help improve the diagnosis (a) rates and (b) treatments for ovarian cancer in (i) England and (ii) Romford constituency.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Improving the diagnosis rate and treatment for all cancers including for ovarian cancer, is a priority for this Government. The Department is working with NHS England and is taking steps across England to increase diagnosis rates, including setting stretching ambitions, supporting general practitioners (GPs) in referring patients, expanding diagnostic capacity and enabling more precise diagnosis through technology. These steps and actions apply in Romford as across England.
To encourage people to see their general practitioner if they notice symptoms that could be cancer, NHS England runs the ‘Help Us, Help You’ campaigns, which address the barriers that deter patients from accessing the National Health Service. NHS England is currently running a ‘Help us Help you’ campaign highlighting the abdominal and urological symptoms of cancer, including ovarian cancer, and addressing the barriers that stop people from accessing services in the NHS.
NHS England introduced the Faster Diagnosis Standard (FDS) which aims to ensure patients have cancer diagnosed or ruled out within 28 days of urgent referral from a GP or screening services with a 75% standard ambition. To achieve the FDS, NHS England has implemented ‘non-specific symptom pathways’ for patients who have symptoms that do not align to a particular type of tumour, including for non-specific symptoms of pancreatic cancer.
Further to this, the Department has committed to £2.3 billion of capital funding to expanding diagnostic capacity across the NHS by rolling out more community diagnostic centres, delivering vital tests, scans and checks, including for ovarian cancer.
The Department invests in health research through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). NIHR has funded six research projects into screening for ovarian cancer since 2018, with a combined total funding value of £3.8 million, including looking at the impact and effectiveness of different kinds of testing and screening and effectiveness of treatment options. The overall goal is to improve diagnosis and treatment to improve patient outcomes.
Nov. 01 2011
Source Page: Cancer survival in Australia, Canada, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and the UK, 1995-2007 (the International Cancer Benchmarking Partnership): an analysis of population-based cancer registry data. [Published article.] 12 p.Found: Cancer survival in Australia, Canada, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and the UK, 1995-2007 (the International
Mentions:
1: Yousaf, Humza (SNP - Glasgow Pollok) The early evaluation from those rapid cancer diagnostic services shows that hepato-pancreato-biliary - Speech Link
2: Baillie, Jackie (Lab - Dumbarton) According to Target Ovarian Cancer, people in the west of Scotland cannot access the life-saving surgery - Speech Link
3: Yousaf, Humza (SNP - Glasgow Pollok) Notwithstanding that, I want to see the work that we are doing, particularly on ovarian cancer, being - Speech Link
4: Mochan, Carol (Lab - South Scotland) Given all of that, what additional investment has been made in sexual health services to ensure that - Speech Link
Asked by: Baillie, Jackie (Scottish Labour - Dumbarton)
Question
To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to support women with ovarian cancer in rural and remote areas, where access to treatment may be lacking.
Answered by Minto, Jenni - Minister for Public Health and Women's Health
The Scottish Government wants cancer patients to be treated as close to home as clinically appropriate. However, as treatments for some cancers become more complex and expensive, it becomes impossible to deliver them in every location.
Cancer services require a highly specialised workforce. In order to ensure the future sustainability of our services, we published our ten-year Cancer Strategy in which we have committed to modelling cancer workforce requirements and continue to grow the number of training places to expand our workforce.
As part of the Scottish Government’s work to develop a sustainable healthcare workforce, we continue to look for opportunities to increase levels of recruitment and retention of healthcare staff in rural areas and will develop a Rural Workforce Recruitment Strategy by the end of 2024. This will support employers to ensure that the health and social care needs of people, including women with ovarian cancer who live in rural communities, are met.
Dec. 09 2008
Source Page: Cancer Reform Strategy: maintaining momentum, building for the future - first annual report. 67 p.Found: Cancer Reform Strategy: maintaining momentum, building for the future - first annual report. 67 p.
Asked by: Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that the 15 per cent shortfall in clinical oncologists, as estimated in the Royal College of Radiologists workforce census, does not impact the operational performance of radiotherapy services.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
According to the latest data, of those 10,328 cancer patients referred for first or subsequent treatment for radiotherapy in March 2024, 89.7% were treated within 31 days. The proportion of patients waiting more than 31 days for radiotherapy treatment in March 2024 was therefore 10.3%. This has decreased by 4.5% since January 2024.
We are aware of regional disparities in wait times for cancer treatment through NHS England’s data, and are considering the findings made by the Royal College of Radiologists. Tackling inequalities in outcomes, experience, and access of cancer diagnostics, including regional disparities, is a key focus of the Government. NHS England has commissioned six new cancer clinical audits in breast cancer, both primary and metastatic, as well as ovarian, pancreatic, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and kidney cancer. These will provide timely evidence for cancer service providers of where patterns of care in England may vary, increase the consistency of access to treatments, and help stimulate improvements in cancer treatments and outcomes for patients. The first outcomes of these audits are expected in September 2024.
The Department is working closely with NHS England to make sure we have the right workforce with the right skills up and down the country. In 2023/24, NHS England invested an additional £50 million to increase the number of cancer and diagnostic specialists.
The Government is also backing the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan, with over £2.4 billion over the next five years to fund additional education and training places. The plan sets out an aim to double the number of medical school places in England to 15,000 places a year by 2031/32, and to work towards this expansion by increasing places by a third, to 10,000 a year, by 2028/29.
We are building our cancer workforce. In January 2024 there were over 35,200 full-time equivalent (FTE) staff in the cancer workforce, an increase of over 13,300, or 60.7% since January 2010. Regarding clinical oncology specifically, as of January 2024, there are currently over 1,600 FTE doctors working in the speciality of clinical oncology in National Health Service trusts and other core organisations in England. This is over 30, or 2.2%, more than last year, over 300, or 27.7%, more than 2019, and over 600, 66.5%, more than in 2010. This includes over 900 FTE consultants. This is over 40, or 5.1%, more than last year, over 100, 22.0%, more than in 2019, and over 400, 80.2%, more than in 2010.
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, if she will make a comparative assessment of the adequacy of funding her Department provides to help tackle (a) less survivable cancers compared to (b) other cancers; and if she will make it her policy to (i) create a framework assessing the challenges around cancers with lower survival rates and (ii) increase funding for those cancers.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is taking steps through NHS England to improve outcomes for cancer patients, including those with less survivable cancers. Making improvements across different cancer types is critical to helping achieve the NHS Long Term Plan ambition of diagnosing 75% of patients at an early stage by 2028 and reducing inequalities in cancer survival. NHS England has commissioned new cancer clinical audits covering five cancer types, some of which are less survivable: pancreatic cancer, ovarian cancer, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, kidney cancer and primary and metastatic breast cancer. All five audits will cover care delivered in England and Wales and will see an investment of approximately £5.4 million for an initial period of three years.
NHS England is responsible for funding allocations to integrated care boards (ICBs). ICBs then decide how that money is spent within the local integrated care system. The allocations process is independent of Government and NHS England takes advice on the underlying formula from the independent Advisory Committee on Resource Allocation. NHS England produces a target allocation, or 'fair share' for each area, based on a complex assessment of factors such as demography, morbidity, deprivation, and the unavoidable cost of providing services in different areas. This means that funding decisions are fair and equitable.
Delivering more research is key to understanding and assessing the challenges around cancers with lower survival rates. As with other Government funders of health research, the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) does not allocate funding for specific disease areas, including less survivable cancers. The level of research spend in a particular area is driven by factors including scientific potential and the number and scale of successful funding applications. The NIHR welcomes funding applications for research into any aspect of human health, including less survivable cancers.
Mentions:
1: Andrew Stephenson (Con - Pendle) I am pleased that NHS England is reviewing mental health services for all staff, to ensure that all staff - Speech Link
2: Andrew Stephenson (Con - Pendle) NHS England is reviewing mental health services for all staff who need them, to ensure that they can - Speech Link
3: Ruth Cadbury (Lab - Brentford and Isleworth) Only in an emergency admission in another country was the ovarian cancer diagnosed and the tumour removed - Speech Link
4: Helen Whately (Con - Faversham and Mid Kent) Friend rightly flags the excellent work going on to improve access to mental health services across the - Speech Link