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  • Rebecca Long Bailey – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    Rebecca Long Bailey – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Rebecca Long Bailey on 2016-05-24.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that outsourced hospital food providers and the places they source their ingredients are monitored regularly to ensure the highest hygiene standards.

    Jane Ellison

    All hospital food providers need to register with their local authority Environmental Health Department, who will carry out food safety interventions, including inspections, at a frequency determined by the risk based intervention criteria in the Food Law Code of Practice. The inspections will include consideration of the provider’s traceability system.

  • Fabian Hamilton – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    Fabian Hamilton – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Fabian Hamilton on 2016-05-24.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department has taken to ensure equality of access to heart valve replacements.

    Jane Ellison

    NHS England is holding a Clinical Summit on 15 June 2016, bringing together cardiologists and cardiac surgeons to examine the issues relating to heart valve disease. This will discuss variation and the outputs will be used to inform the future commissioning approach within specialised commissioning.

    In addition, the office of the Chief Scientific Officer for NHS England is working with the National Clinical Director for Heart Disease and Health Education England to look at ways to improve provision and increase access to echocardiography for the identification of heart valve disease.

    NHS England has also undertaken a significant programme of work on congenital heart services, working very closely with the relevant stakeholders, including patients and their representatives, clinicians and hospital managers. This work produced a new set of service standards with the aim of achieving the best outcomes for all patients, consistently across the whole country and with excellent patient experience. Following consultation these standards were agreed by the board of NHS England in July 2015 and came into effect on 1 April 2016.

  • Fabian Hamilton – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    Fabian Hamilton – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Fabian Hamilton on 2016-05-24.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department has taken to improve equality of access to echo-cardiography for the identification of heart valve disease for people aged over 65.

    Jane Ellison

    NHS England is holding a Clinical Summit on 15 June 2016, bringing together cardiologists and cardiac surgeons to examine the issues relating to heart valve disease. This will discuss variation and the outputs will be used to inform the future commissioning approach within specialised commissioning.

    In addition, the office of the Chief Scientific Officer for NHS England is working with the National Clinical Director for Heart Disease and Health Education England to look at ways to improve provision and increase access to echocardiography for the identification of heart valve disease.

    NHS England has also undertaken a significant programme of work on congenital heart services, working very closely with the relevant stakeholders, including patients and their representatives, clinicians and hospital managers. This work produced a new set of service standards with the aim of achieving the best outcomes for all patients, consistently across the whole country and with excellent patient experience. Following consultation these standards were agreed by the board of NHS England in July 2015 and came into effect on 1 April 2016.

  • Nusrat Ghani – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    Nusrat Ghani – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Nusrat Ghani on 2016-05-24.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Health, with reference to the Answer of 9 May 2016 to Question 36176, what steps his Department is taking to support research to develop a non-invasive diagnostic technique for endometriosis.

    George Freeman

    The Department’s National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) welcomes funding applications for research into any aspect of human health, including diagnosis of endometriosis. These applications are subject to peer review and judged in open competition, with awards being made on the basis of the importance of the topic to patients and health and care services, value for money and scientific quality.

    The Director of the NIHR Diagnostic Evidence Cooperative Oxford, University of Oxford, provided mentorship and methodological expertise to support a recent systematic review and meta-analysis of the diagnostic accuracy of cancer antigen 125 for endometriosis. This was published in May this year in BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.

  • Luciana Berger – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    Luciana Berger – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2016-05-24.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if the NHS will distinguish between sexuality and gender identity in the collection of data for people accessing Improving Access to Psychological Therapies services.

    Alistair Burt

    The Improving Access to Psychological Therapies dataset does not currently make the distinction between sexuality and gender identity. The dataset has two fields that may be of relevance to this question:

    Sexual orientation, which is the current sexual orientation of a person and has the following valid codes:

    1

    Heterosexual

    2

    Homosexual Gay/Lesbian

    3

    Bi-sexual

    4

    Person asked and does not know or is not sure

    9

    Unknown

    Z

    Not stated (Person asked but declined to provide a response)

    Gender, which is the current gender of a person. Note that the classification is phenotypical rather than genotypical; i.e. it does not provide codes for medical or scientific purposes. It has the following valid codes:

    0

    Not known

    1

    Male

    2

    Female

    9

    Not specified
  • Nusrat Ghani – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    Nusrat Ghani – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Nusrat Ghani on 2016-05-24.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Health, with reference to the Answer of 9 May 2016 to Question 36176, what assessment his Department has made of the reasons for the increase in the count of finished admission episodes with a primary or secondary diagnosis of endometriosis, between 2010-11 and 2014-15.

    Jane Ellison

    The Department has not conducted a formal assessment of the reasons for the increase in hospital admissions with a primary or secondary diagnosis of endometriosis, between 2010-11 and 2014-15. However, it has asked the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence to develop a guideline on the diagnosis and management of endometriosis. This will include: use of staging systems to guide treatment decisions; timing of interventions; and pharmacological and surgical treatments. A consultation on the draft guidelines is scheduled to run from 27 February 2017 until the 10 April 2017, with an expected publication date of September 2017.

  • Nicholas Soames – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    Nicholas Soames – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Nicholas Soames on 2016-05-24.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Health, which organisations are consulted in advance of decisions taken on how many (a) doctors and (b) nurses will be trained each year.

    Ben Gummer

    It is Health Education England’s responsibility to ensure that there is sufficient future supply of staff, including doctors and nurses, to meet the workforce requirements of the English health system.

    The Workforce Plan is built upon the needs of local employers, providers, commissioners and other stakeholders who, as members of its Local Education Training Boards (LETBs), shape the 13 local plans.

    The Workforce Plan is predominately an aggregate of the local LETB plans, but the final national plan is only agreed with the advice and input of its clinical advisory groups and Patients’ Advisory Forum, as well as the Royal Colleges and other stakeholders.

  • Oliver Colvile – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    Oliver Colvile – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Oliver Colvile on 2016-05-24.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Health, for what reasons people in Plymouth who have epilepsy are waiting six months from having a seizure to see a consultant of specialist nurse.

    Jane Ellison

    There are no national measures or means by which the Department monitors frequency of patients reviews, either by consultants or nurses. Guidance is issued by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence however this does not replace the skills and knowledge of health professionals in managing patients. The arrangements for the management and follow up of people with epilepsy are a local matter and decisions on the frequency with which patients are seen should be made on a case by case basis, taking into account the individual circumstances of each patient.

    NHS England advises that the maximum wait for outpatients to receive a neurology appointment is 12 weeks currently. Additionally 92% of patients are being seen under the specified ‘Referral To Treatment’ waiting times of 18 weeks which is within the national target.

    The information on the number of people with epilepsy in Plymouth is not available in the format requested.

  • Jonathan Reynolds – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    Jonathan Reynolds – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jonathan Reynolds on 2016-05-24.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many patients discharged from assessment and treatment units were re-admitted to hospital settings in each of the last five years.

    Alistair Burt

    The data on patients discharged from assessment and treatment units and re-admitted to a hospital setting or an assessment and treatment unit in each of the last five years is not available.

    Health and Social Care Information Centre has been collecting data through the Learning Disability Assuring Transformation data collection since February 2015. Between March 2015 and February 2016, 1,835 patients were admitted to inpatient settings, of these, 250 patients were re-admitted within a year, including 75 patients who were re-admitted in the last 30 days.¹ Data on discharge has also been collected since February 2015 but readmission and discharge data are not linked and therefore may not relate to the same person.

    Note:

    ¹ To note for those readmitted, Health and Social Care Information Centre can only consider the data they have from February 2015 onwards. Therefore if a patient was discharged in January 2015 and then readmitted in March 2015 they would not be counted as a readmission. The readmission figures may currently be under counting; however this will improve over time as the data set grows.

  • Jonathan Reynolds – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    Jonathan Reynolds – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jonathan Reynolds on 2016-05-24.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many patients discharged from assessment and treatment units were re-admitted to such units in each of the last five years.

    Alistair Burt

    The data on patients discharged from assessment and treatment units and re-admitted to a hospital setting or an assessment and treatment unit in each of the last five years is not available.

    Health and Social Care Information Centre has been collecting data through the Learning Disability Assuring Transformation data collection since February 2015. Between March 2015 and February 2016, 1,835 patients were admitted to inpatient settings, of these, 250 patients were re-admitted within a year, including 75 patients who were re-admitted in the last 30 days.¹ Data on discharge has also been collected since February 2015 but readmission and discharge data are not linked and therefore may not relate to the same person.

    Note:

    ¹ To note for those readmitted, Health and Social Care Information Centre can only consider the data they have from February 2015 onwards. Therefore if a patient was discharged in January 2015 and then readmitted in March 2015 they would not be counted as a readmission. The readmission figures may currently be under counting; however this will improve over time as the data set grows.