Asked by: Julian Sturdy (Conservative - York Outer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent discussions he has had with Cabinet colleagues on the effect on productivity of NHS waiting times in A&E.
Answered by Will Quince
My Rt hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, holds regular discussions with Cabinet colleagues on the work to improve accident and emergency (A&E) waiting times, including at health stocktakes.
The Government’s aim is to make it easier for people to access a range of urgent care services and avoid needing to make unnecessary visits to A&E departments. When people do need to attend A&E, our aim is that this care is provide more quickly, with 76% of patients admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours by March 2024.
Asked by: David Evennett (Conservative - Bexleyheath and Crayford)
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 promote the use of urgent care centres.
Answered by Will Quince
A key aim of the Delivery plan for recovering urgent and emergency care services is making it easier for patients to access the right care. Urgent Treatment Centres (UTCs) are an important part of urgent and emergency care, providing patients with an alternative to accident and emergency, helping them get the right level of care and taking pressures off our Emergency Departments.
The NHS Directory of Services (DoS) enables referrals into the most appropriate urgent care service from 111 and 999, supporting better management of patients. Under the plan, a rebuild of the DoS platform will make it easier for staff in the NHS to direct people to the appropriate services.
NHS England will work with stakeholders to agree consistent approaches for patients who walk into hospitals, which will support patients to be seen in the most appropriate setting.
The plan sets out that integrated care boards (ICBs) should determine where UTCs will be most effective in their system. They may be co-located with the local emergency department or a standalone service either on or off a hospital site. Under the plan, ICB decisions about all existing services should be concluded through 2023/24.
Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he plans to take steps to ensure that all Major Towns have both minor injury and emergency care units.
Answered by Will Quince
The commissioning of local services is a matter for the National Health Service, allocating funding to best meet patient needs locally. Integrated care boards (ICBs) are responsible for the commissioning of both full type one emergency departments and type three accident and emergency services, including those badged as Minor Injuries Units.
As set out in the Delivery Plan for Recovering Urgent and Emergency Care, ICBs should determine where type three services will be most effectively located. We expect that decisions about all existing services should be concluded through 2023/24.
Asked by: Lord Bradley (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what, if any, actions they intend to take to ensure that people suffering from mental health crises are not taken to a police custody suite.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
We have announced the development of a new National Partnership Agreement between policing and health partners to ensure that the right agency responds to a mental health incident, removing police involvement earlier in the process where it’s not needed. This will support roll-out of the Right Care, Right Person approach, under which police will only engage in a mental health incident when there is a real and immediate risk to life or serious harm.
We have already achieved a significant reduction in the number of people taken to a police cell as a place of safety in recent years. In 2021/22 a police station was used as a place of safety 254 times in England out of a total of 36,594 Section 136 incidents. This represents less than 1% of incidents and is down from an estimated 8,667 times out of a total of 23,907 such incidents in 2011/12. The Draft Mental Health Bill contains provisions to remove police stations as a place of safety, so that people held under Section 136 will be in more appropriate health-based settings when in crisis or waiting for a place on a specialist ward. The Bill will be introduced when parliamentary time allows.
On 23 January 2023 we set out details on how £150 million of capital investment, first announced in the 2021 Spending Review, will be used to build mental health urgent and emergency care infrastructure. This includes £7 million for specialised mental health ambulances across the country to provide better care and support for people experiencing a mental health crisis.
We are also funding over 160 wider capital schemes including to provide and improve crisis cafes, crisis houses, mental health urgent care centres, health-based places of safety and broader improvements to crisis lines and emergency departments. This will mean care can be provided in more appropriate spaces for those in need, and will reduce pressure on wider parts of the system including accident and emergency.
Asked by: Neil Coyle (Labour - Bermondsey and Old Southwark)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many hours on average police officers spend in Accident and Emergency each month waiting for sectioned people to receive treatment.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Home Office collects and publishes data on detentions under section 135 and section 136 of the Mental Health Act 1983, by financial year, as part of the Police Powers and Procedures statistical bulletin.
The most recent data, for the year ending March 2022, are available here:
Number of detentions under the Mental Health Act 1983, by year and legislation, England and Wales1,2, 2020/21 to 2021/22
Year ending… | Legislation | |
Section 136 | Section 1353 | |
March 2021 | 33,883 | 2,691 |
March 2022 | 36,529 | 2,901 |
Notes:
Data are not available broken down by month.
The section 136 data includes a breakdown by place of safety that the person was first taken to, such as A&E. However, data on the amount of time police officers spend at the place of safety are not collected.
Data for the year ending March 2023 will be published in Autumn 2023.
Asked by: Daisy Cooper (Liberal Democrat - St Albans)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to his Department's Delivery plan for recovering urgent and emergency care services, published on 30 January 2023, what progress his Department has made on its target to create 5,000 emergency care beds.
Answered by Will Quince
We are continuing to make progress to deliver the 5,000 staffed, permanent beds set out in our Urgent and Emergency Care Recovery Plan, supported by £1 billion of additional funding. NHS England has worked with integrated care boards to review local demand and capacity and ensure plans are put in place to deliver the increases to National Health Service capacity needed to deliver this ambition.
Asked by: Derek Twigg (Labour - Halton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what were the average paediatric accident and emergency waiting times on 31 March (a) 2015, (b) 2019 and (c) 2023.
Answered by Will Quince
The information requested is not held centrally.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the Delivery plan for the recovery of urgent and emergency care services, how many additional staffed hospital beds have been opened since January 2023.
Answered by Will Quince
Good progress is being made in the delivery of 5,000 additional beds as part of the permanent bed base for next winter, as committed to in the Urgent and Emergency Care (UEC) recovery plan. NHS England has worked with integrated care boards to review local demand and capacity plans for 2023/24 and ensure local plans are in place to deliver this commitment. This is being supported by the £1 billion of funding for National Health Service capacity announced in the recovery plan.
No specific estimate has been made. As part of the implementation of the UEC recovery plan, NHS England is working with all systems so that all hospitals with type one emergency departments provide appropriate Same Day Emergency Care seven days a week with minimum opening hours of 12 hours per day.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent estimate his Department has made of the number of same day emergency care services available in each hospital with a major emergency department.
Answered by Will Quince
Good progress is being made in the delivery of 5,000 additional beds as part of the permanent bed base for next winter, as committed to in the Urgent and Emergency Care (UEC) recovery plan. NHS England has worked with integrated care boards to review local demand and capacity plans for 2023/24 and ensure local plans are in place to deliver this commitment. This is being supported by the £1 billion of funding for National Health Service capacity announced in the recovery plan.
No specific estimate has been made. As part of the implementation of the UEC recovery plan, NHS England is working with all systems so that all hospitals with type one emergency departments provide appropriate Same Day Emergency Care seven days a week with minimum opening hours of 12 hours per day.
Asked by: Seema Malhotra (Labour (Co-op) - Feltham and Heston)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many people discharged from hospital into the community returned to Accident and Emergency within (a) 24 hours, (b) 48 hours and (c) 72 hours in each of the last twelve months.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The information requested is not held centrally.