Tag: Lord Hunt of Kings Heath

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Hunt of Kings Heath on 2015-12-15.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is the current membership of the care.data Advisory Group.

Lord Prior of Brampton

The care.data Advisory Group met between March 2014 and October 2015 and has now been disbanded. The group was Chaired by Ciarán Devane, who at the time was a non-executive director of NHS England, and included representatives from the following organisations:

– Academy of Medical Royal Colleges;

– Association of Medical Research Charities;

– Big Brother Watch;

– British Heart Foundation;

– British Medical Association;

– HealthWatch England;

– Hurley Group;

– Kings College London;

– Kings Fund;

– medConfidential;

– MIND;

– National Institute for Health Research;

– National Voices;

– Patients4Data;

– Royal College of General Practitioners;

– Royal College of Psychiatrists;

– Clinical Commissioning Groups;

– UCL Partners; and

– Wellcome Trust.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Hunt of Kings Heath on 2015-12-21.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of the risk of a conflict of interest when members of the Association of Pharmaceutical Specials Manufacturers both provide the reference prices from which to set the NHS tariff prices for specials in the primary care sector and supply those specials to community pharmacists.

Lord Prior of Brampton

Members of the Association of Pharmaceutical Specials Manufacturers do not provide the Department with reference price data for their products. Individual manufacturers provide data on their sales volumes and selling prices to the Department under a memorandum of understanding between manufacturers and the Department. This data is then used to set a reimbursement price which reflects the price at which community pharmacies purchased these products in the quarter before.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Hunt of Kings Heath on 2016-01-18.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether, as a result of the review of the NHS Commissioning Board’s policy on the autonomy of Commissioning Support Units (CSUs), CSUs that want to become staff enterprises or staff mutuals will have access to working capital on the same basis as other options open to CSUs.

Lord Prior of Brampton

It will be for NHS England’s Commissioning Committee to decide, in due course, whether to offer Clinical Support Units (CSUs) who apply to become autonomous, access to working capital and if so, on what terms.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Hunt of Kings Heath on 2016-01-25.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Prior of Brampton on 19 January (HL4840), why the independent review of the contract between Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Clinical Commissioning Group and UnitingCare Partnership will only focus on the commissioner perspective.

Lord Prior of Brampton

We are advised that NHS England’s review of the contract between Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Clinical Commissioning Group and UnitingCare Partnership will focus on the commissioner perspective. Monitor, as the sector regulator for health services in England, will also be conducting a review.

However, Monitor’s review will assess the contract from the perspective of the providers involved and consider how relevant issues might be mitigated in the future. Monitor and NHS England will share their respective findings with each other.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Hunt of Kings Heath on 2016-02-09.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the experience that Bain and Company has to assess evidence to support transformation and potential for replication in terms of health services in the NHS context.

Lord Prior of Brampton

The Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA) commissioned Bain and Company to support vanguards as an extension to work previously commissioned from the company as part of a programme called Future Focused Finance, an initiative sponsored by the Department of Health and arm’s length bodies. This earlier work for the HFMA had focused on the design of a value-based decision effectiveness tool, piloted in Mid-Cheshire and Liverpool. The HFMA, in partnership with NHS England, commissioned the extension to this work so that the tool could be used to support value-based decision-making in the 2016-17 New Care Models programme.

Alternatives were not sought from competitors because the vanguard support built on the original Bain and Company work for the HFMA.

The value of the vanguard support contract is £650,000. Value for money was obtained by negotiation, having been benchmarked with other commissions made by the National Health Service to external health consultancies.

As part of the contract, Bain and Company will be handing over its approach to NHS England, so that NHS England can support other areas in implementing new care models.

Bain and Company has not been commissioned to assess evidence to support transformation and potential for replication of new care models in other areas. The company is commissioned to develop and implement a framework that appropriately experienced NHS staff can use to assess such evidence. Intellectual property rights in respect of the framework in the future are assigned to HFMA under the terms of the contract. The NHS is entitled to use the framework free of charge in perpetuity.

Bain and Company is involved in the development of the tool used to make the assessment, and in the implementation of the process to use that tool. The company is specifically commissioned to help vanguard sites to use the tool and to summarise the resulting value propositions to facilitate decision-making by NHS England.

No conflict of interest arises as decisions concerning funding allocations for individual vanguards are made by NHS England’s Executive Team and Investment Committee and not Bain and Company.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Hunt of Kings Heath on 2016-02-23.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, of all the schools that have had their admission arrangements objected to in (1) 2014, and (2) 2015, what percentage were found not to have violated the School Admissions Code at least once.

Lord Nash

In 2013/14, the percentage of objections referred to the adjudicator which were not upheld was 14%. In 2014/15, the percentage was 20%.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Hunt of Kings Heath on 2016-03-07.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the current availability of school places.

Lord Nash

Local authorities are rising to the challenge of creating new school places where they are needed – 445,000 new places were added between 2010 and 2014, with many more delivered since then. This was supported by £5 billion of funding allocated to local authorities to create new places between 2011 and 2015.

Supporting local authorities in their responsibility to ensure sufficient school places in their area remains one of this Government’s top priorities. That is why we have committed to investing £23 billion in school buildings between now and 2021 to create a further 600,000 new places, open 500 new schools and address essential maintenance needs.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Hunt of Kings Heath on 2016-03-21.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the accuracy of official figures of the number of patients waiting for treatment for more than a year.

Lord Prior of Brampton

Consultant-led referral to treatment waiting time statistics are designated as National Statistics. This means that the statistics are produced according to sound methods, and are managed impartially and objectively in the public interest.

From time to time, for example when there are serious problems with patient administration systems, National Health Service trusts do need to temporarily suspend submissions of data for inclusion in the publication of National Statistics for reasons of data quality and completeness. Nine acute trusts did not submit data on referral to treatment waiting times for January 2016. For this reason, the published data on the number of patients waiting more than a year to start consultant-led treatment for non-urgent conditions may be understated. NHS Improvement is working intensively with these trusts so that they can begin submitting data again as quickly as possible.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Hunt of Kings Heath on 2016-04-13.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will list by name and contract value the contracts that are currently being reviewed in the light of the review by David Stout into the causes of the termination of the Uniting Care Partnership contract.

Lord Prior of Brampton

This is a matter for NHS England. The Department understands that information on other contracts is in the process of being collated.

NHS England advises that it will need to review this before making decisions about sharing any of this information.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Hunt of Kings Heath on 2016-04-18.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to develop a national strategy for eye care.

Lord Prior of Brampton

Given the size of England, and the diversity of the health needs of different communities, we believe commissioning needs to be owned and managed locally.

Therefore, there are no plans to develop a national strategy for eye care.

Clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) are responsible for commissioning hospital eye services and for holding their providers to account in terms of contract performance. CCGs are also able to commission eye care services from community optometrists where they judge them to be needed in their areas over and above the sight tests commissioned by NHS England. Such services could include post cataract surgery reviews, glaucoma monitoring and low vision services which may reduce pressure on hospital eye departments, reduce waiting times and make patient care pathways more accessible in the community.

There is scope for further work to be done by community optometrists and the Clinical Council for eye health commissioning is working with commissioners to develop commissioning guidelines in this area.

CCGs have the ability to develop alternatives to hospital care. We would expect patients who require further planned stages of treatment in line with their agreed care plan, to receive this treatment without undue delay and in line with when it is clinically appropriate.