Maria Caulfield: ...Op RESTORE. The Armed Forces Act 2021 introduced a legal requirement for integrated care boards to give due regard to the Armed Forces Community when commissioning healthcare services. The 2024/25 general practice (GP) contract will introduce a requirement that GPs must have due regard for the requirements, needs, and circumstances of Armed Forces Veterans when offering services and making...
Helen Whately: ...my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham had her baby there. I understand that stroke rehabilitation services in Essex community hospitals are not currently staffed in line with national best practice for specialist stroke units. I am sure that my right hon. Friends’ constituents want services not only on the doorstep, but to be staffed to provide the best possible care. That will be...
Andrea Leadsom: There is no centrally held data on the number of general practice or dentist vacancies. NHS England conducts an annual community pharmacy workforce survey, that collects data on vacancy rates across community pharmacies in England. Data for the last 12 months is not currently available, but data for 2023 is being analysed, and will be published later this year on NHS England’s Health...
Andrew Stephenson: ...Plan. Current priorities include work on improving cancer survival rates through earlier diagnosis, and reducing cancer treatment waiting times across England, including the time between an urgent general practice referral and the commencement of treatment. The Government is working jointly with NHS England on implementing the delivery plan for tackling the COVID-19 backlogs in elective...
Andrew Stephenson: ...is offered to eligible people aged 40 to 74 years old, and includes an assessment for type 2 diabetes. If an individual is found to be at risk of type 2 diabetes, they are referred on to their general practice for further clinical assessment, treatment if appropriate, or further referred to programmes such as the National Diabetes Prevention Programme, to help reduce their risk of...
Andrew Stephenson: NHS England publishes Hospital and Community Health Services (HCHS) Workforce statistics and General Practice Workforce statistics publications for England. These show that as of December 2023, the latest data available, there are 80,123 full time equivalent junior doctors working across HCHS and general practice settings in England. This is 4,505, or 6.0%, more than in December 2022. It is...
Andrea Leadsom: ...could include commissioning adapted sight testing services to meet the needs of adults with learning disabilities. People over the age of 14 years old with a learning disability are entitled to a general practice led annual health check, to maintain their health. This can help identify undetected health conditions early, including problems with vision. All children under the age of 16...
Sandesh Gulhane: I refer members to my entry in the register of members’ interests; I am a practising NHS general practitioner. As a GP, I see people who cannot wait in the A and E queue any longer. They come to me with chest pain and they come to me with signs of stroke, because they do not want to get into that queue. That puts huge pressure on me in general practice and on primary care. What can the...
Lord Markham: ...an emergency, where they may be looked after by medical or stroke teams. Rehabilitation professionals may be needed to support recovery. Facial palsy without additional features is often managed in general practice. If time and treatment does not result in a satisfactory outcome, then the patient should be referred to a hospital, to be reviewed by a neurologist and other members of the...
Lord Markham: The Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme aims to grow and diversify the general practice workforce. The scheme provides funding for 26,000 additional roles in primary care networks, to help create bespoke multi-disciplinary teams. General practitioners are not currently included in the scheme as they are a core role within general practice, and the recruitment of general practitioners is...
Willie Coffey: ..., not least in telehealth. Does the cabinet secretary agree that we must continue to develop and exploit the power of digital technology in our health service to help us to improve things such as general practice appointment systems, e-health digital consultations and general telehealth services, which are not only crucial for people who live in rural parts of Scotland but are valuable as...
Neil Gray: That is a good point from Emma Harper—she is absolutely right. Recruitment into general practice specialty training programmes in Scotland has improved drastically in recent years. For example, of all the GPST posts that were advertised in 2022, 99 per cent were filled successfully, which was up from 64 per cent in 2016. A 100 per cent fill rate has been achieved for the first time in...
Jackie Baillie: ...centres to provide an additional 55,500 procedures per year by 2025-26. They promised to increase the number of diagnostic procedures by 78,000 in 2022-23. They promised to deliver 800 additional general practitioners by 2027 and to give every general practice access to a link worker. The truth is that those promises have been broken. Only three national treatment centres are up and...
Andrew Stephenson: ...outcomes and experiences of patients. A huge part of that is making sure that patients get to talk to a GP. I am glad to say that since 2019 we have recruited more than 36,000 additional staff into general practice, covering a range of roles including pharmacists. We fulfilled our commitment to recruit 26,000 additional staff a year ahead of the March 2024 target, and we have also...
Andrea Leadsom: ...sector to recover activity more quickly, addressing underlying issues and setting out the action needed for longer term reform of the system. We do not hold data on how many people attended their general practice with a dental issue.
Andrea Leadsom: ...dental therapists and dental hygienists to supply and administer some medicines without the need for a prescription from a dentist, allowing therapists and hygienists to work to their full scope of practice. We will respond shortly to the consultation on the proposals. Furthermore, NHS England’s January 2023 guidance clarified that dental therapists and dental hygienists can open and...
Michelle Thomson: ...considered and integrated into the future financial planning process.” The Scottish Fiscal Commission and the Finance and Public Administration Committee have called for longer-term funding in general terms. I would welcome that being set out for the remediation programme; I would be pleased to see it. I hope that that would be set out in other areas, too, as part of general good...
Paul Blomfield: To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to ensure all general practice nursing staff will receive a pay uplift for 2023-24.
Andrea Leadsom: We are working with NHS England to increase the general practice (GP) workforce in England as a whole, which includes Essex. This includes measures to boost recruitment, address the reasons why doctors leave the profession, and encourage them to return to practice. We have increased the number of GP training places and in 2022 saw the highest ever number of doctors accepting a place in GP...
Andrew Stephenson: ...transform diagnostic services from 2022 to 2025, most of which will help increase the number of community diagnostic centres (CDCs) up to 160 by March 2025, prioritising CDCs for cancer services. General practice teams have also been given direct access to tests like computed tomography scans, magnetic resonance imaging, and ultrasounds helping to cut waiting times and speed up the...