Oral Answers to Questions — Health – in the House of Commons at 2:30 pm on 25 October 2005.
Desmond Swayne
Parliamentary Private Secretaries To Leader of the Opposition
2:30,
25 October 2005
What progress has been made to ensure that insulin pump therapy is available to diabetics in accordance with National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence guidance No. 57.
Jane Kennedy
Minister of State, Department of Health
The House will be reassured to learn that a new insulin pumps working group has been set up by the Department of Health and Diabetes UK, in order to develop a strategy to support local services in implementing national guidance on insulin pumps. The findings will be fed into the NICE review of the insulin pumps guidance, which is currently scheduled for February 2006.
Desmond Swayne
Parliamentary Private Secretaries To Leader of the Opposition
Only some of the 2 million diabetics in this country have access to this treatment, while many do not. Does that not illustrate the postcode lottery that persists in our NHS? What recourse does an individual patient have if there is clear evidence that their PCT is not implementing the NICE guidance?
Jane Kennedy
Minister of State, Department of Health
Once NICE has issued guidance, we expect the NHS to take full account of it. The NHS has three months from the date of publication of guidance on technology appraisals to provide funding, so that clinical decisions made by doctors involving NICE-recommended treatments or drugs can be funded. Where there is evidence, however, that PCTs are restricting access to NICE-recommended treatments solely on cost grounds, we look to the strategic health authorities to intervene.
Primary care is a term used to describe community-based health services which are usually the first (and often the only) point of contact that patients make within the NHS. It covers services provided by family doctors (GPs), community and practice nurses, community therapists (physio, occupational, etc.), pharmacists, chiropodists, optometrists, and dentists.
A Primary Care Trust in the NHS is a regional body in the NHS, catering to a specific geographical region, which is responsible for providing primary care to the individuals within that area.
These primary care trusts have budgetary responsibility, and are tasked by the Department of Health with improving the health of the community, securing the provision of high quality services, and integrating health and social care locally.
