Asked by: Wes Streeting (Labour - Ilford North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many virtual outpatient appointments have been held in each of the past 12 months.
Answered by Will Quince
The data requested can be found in the below table.
Month | Total virtual outpatient appointments |
February 2022 | 1,613,780 |
March 2022 | 1,818,257 |
April 2022 | 1,515,780 |
May 2022 | 1,701,990 |
June 2022 | 1,565,736 |
July 2022 | 1,521,648 |
August 2022 | 1,517,706 |
September 2022 | 1,527,588 |
October 2022 | 1,513,178 |
November 2022 | 1,649,166 |
December 2022 | 1,367,302 |
January 2023 | 1,562,606 |
Asked by: Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Labour (Co-op) - Brighton, Kemptown)
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) fund and (b) develop IT systems to help GP practices implement telemedicine and online consultations.
Answered by Neil O'Brien
NHS England’s GP IT Operating Model, Digital Care Services catalogue and GP IT Futures framework ensures digital systems are modern, integrated, secure and user-friendly. The GP IT Futures framework ensures general practice IT evolves with minimal disruption to care and supports ongoing improvements to procurement, greater choice of nationally accredited suppliers, and products that meet core requirements, standards, and capabilities.
NHS England’s Digital First Primary Care programme is supporting practices to optimise the use of digital tools, including by providing transformation funding to help practices implement video and online consultation systems. The Digital First Online Consultation and Video Consultation framework improves the procurement process for Primary Care Networks of such solutions, and is available at the following link:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/gp/digital-first-primary-care/procurement/
Asked by: Wes Streeting (Labour - Ilford North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the bed occupancy rate of NHS virtual wards was in January 2022.
Answered by Will Quince
The information requested is not collected centrally.
Asked by: Paul Beresford (Conservative - Mole Valley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the guidance by NHS England entitled The two-week wait skin cancer pathway, published on 4 April 2022, if he will make an estimate of the median cost to trusts of establishing a teledermatology service.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Outpatient Recovery and Transformation (OPRT) programme has delivered a series of webinars and processes to raise awareness of various outpatient improvement initiatives to support Integrated Care Systems, with signposting to online resources and contacts for support in implementation.
The OPRT in collaboration with the National Cancer team and other stakeholders have published the Implementing a timed skin cancer diagnostic pathway guidance for local health and care systems (in October 2022), including for teledermatology pathways to support two week wait skin cancer delivery.
NHS England provide support, funding and guidance to help cancer alliances improve outcomes and reduce variation. This includes programme management to support delivery and implementing guidance for achieving best practice. Estimates of costs of establishing teledermatology services are the remit of commissioner and provider organisations.
Asked by: Paul Beresford (Conservative - Mole Valley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department is taking steps to help (a) increase the dermatology workforce and (b) ensure that patients with inflammatory skin conditions can access timely specialist care.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Starting from August 2022, Health Education England has increased the number of training posts in dermatology which will help support the dermatology workforce. In November 2022 there were 1,233 full-time equivalent doctors in the dermatology specialism working in hospital and community health settings, representing an increase of 65 since the previous year.
Alongside this expansion, in September 2022 NHS England produced guidance on referral optimisation for people with skin conditions to ensure that patients with inflammatory skin conditions can access timely specialist care. This can be found at the following link:
Asked by: Paul Beresford (Conservative - Mole Valley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department has made a recent assessment of the potential (a) merits of teledermatology and (b) impact of teledermatology on the level of waiting list backlogs caused by covid-19 in England.
Answered by Will Quince
While the Department has not made a formal assessment of the potential merits of teledermatology or the impact of teledermatology on waiting list backlogs caused by COVID-19 in England, the Department continues to support the National Health Service in working to ensure the recovery and transformation of all elective services, including for patients with skin conditions. This includes providing record levels of funding and setting direction through the elective recovery delivery plan published last year. NHS England’s outpatient recovery and transformation programme published a teledermatology roadmap in 2021.
The outpatient recovery and transformation programme has also introduced a number of initiatives such as using advice and guidance and the virtual teledermatology two-week wait pathway, as well as patient initiated follow-up and remote consultations, all of which provide opportunities to reduce the number of patients attending face-to-face appointments. This means capacity can be released for patients that need to be seen face-to-face, such as those with extensive inflammatory skin disease.
Through these approaches, NHS providers are tackling the backlogs caused by the pandemic and transforming service provision for all patients.
Asked by: Wes Streeting (Labour - Ilford North)
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 press release entitled Patients to carry out health checks in comfort of own home to ease pressure on frontline services, published on 5 December 2022, what steps his Department is taking to evaluate the plan for the digitised NHS health check trial in Cornwall.
Answered by Neil O'Brien
The Department is working with Staffordshire University to evaluate the digital NHS Health Check trial in Cornwall. Findings from the evaluation will be shared once complete in summer 2023. The evaluation will inform the next steps of the Department’s national work to develop a digital NHS Health Check.
Asked by: Wes Streeting (Labour - Ilford North)
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 press release entitled Patients to carry out health checks in comfort of own home to ease pressure on frontline services, released on 5 December 2022, when he expects the outcome of the digitised NHS health check trial in Cornwall to be published.
Answered by Neil O'Brien
The Department is working with Staffordshire University to evaluate the digital NHS Health Check trial in Cornwall. Findings from the evaluation will be shared once complete in summer 2023. The evaluation will inform the next steps of the Department’s national work to develop a digital NHS Health Check.
Asked by: Wes Streeting (Labour - Ilford North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many and what proportion of, patient scans conducted by NHS England were sent to external teleradiology companies for analysis in each of the last three calendar years; and what the cost to the public purse was of the procurement of those services in each of those years.
Answered by Will Quince
The following table shows the total imaging activity in each of the last three calendar years, the total outsourced imaging activity, the percentage of the total imaging activity outsourced to external teleradiology companies for analysis and the total cost of outsourcing. This data has been taken from the NHS England Model Hospital System and is unpublished.
Financial year | Total imaging activity | Total outsourced imaging activity | Percentage of total activity outsourced | Total cost of outsourcing |
2021/22 | 46,940,808 | 3,465,108 | 7.38% | £159,386,148 |
2020/21 | 38,311,986 | 2,498,008 | 6.52% | £118,357,425 |
2019/20 | 47,192,042 | 4,531,398 | 9.6% | £145,198,848 |
Asked by: Wes Streeting (Labour - Ilford North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many virtual wards there are in England; and what the overall bed occupancy rates for virtual wards is.
Answered by Will Quince
Validated data on the number and occupancy rates of virtual wards is not collected and published centrally.