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NHS Foundation Trusts
Mr. Lansley: To ask the Secretary of State for Health pursuant to the answer of 13 February 2006, Official Report, column 1784W, on NHS foundation trusts, what direct financial support was provided by her Department to applicants for foundation trust status in (a) 2004-05 and (b) 2005-06. [85829]
Andy Burnham: During 2004-05 and 2005-06 the Department provided direct financial support for national health service foundation trust applicants to the sum of £175,000.
NHS Funding
Tim Farron: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what plans her Department has (a) to reduce capital spending and (b) to increase revenue spending on the NHS in 2006-07. [87320]
Andy Burnham: The Department have no plans to reduce capital investment by the national health service in 2006-07. Indeed funds allocated direct to NHS trusts and primary care trusts (PCTs) as operational capital for 2006-07 are on average 25 per cent. higher than the previous year and strategic health authorities' strategic capital funds are on average 13 per cent. higher than in 2005-06.
Revenue spending on the NHS is also increasing in 2006-07. Allocations to PCTs rose by 9.2 per cent. in 2006-07.
Capital and revenue are managed and controlled separately by Her Majesty’s Treasury. The Department is voted separate budgets for capital and revenue and does not have the power to vire funding from the capital budget to the revenue budget.
NHS Hospitals
Chris Huhne: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many NHS hospitals there are in (a) absolute terms and (b) per 1,000 population in (i) rural areas and (ii) non-rural areas; which have accident and emergency wards; and if she will make a statement. [84623]
Ms Rosie Winterton: National health service trusts self-report the number of accident and emergency (A&E) services they provide against definitions set by the Department for the three types of accident and emergency. This is the only level at which such information is available. A table detailing the number of type one accident and emergency departments, by NHS organisation, for the period 2005-06 January to March (Q4) has been placed in the Library.
Data is not available on whether acute trusts are rural or non-rural. Therefore, it is not possible to split the number of major (type one) accident and emergency departments between rural and non-rural areas.
Population data at trust level is not collated centrally, as NHS trusts do not have specific catchments areas.
NHS IT
Mr. Stephen O'Brien: To ask the Secretary of State for Health in what way and for what reasons (a) Northumbria Healthcare, (b) Norfolk and Norwich NHS Trust, (c) Dudley NHS Trust and (d) South West Yorkshire Mental Health Trust have dispensed with the NHS IT system; how much it has cost them to do so; and what her estimate is of the impact on the NHS IT programme of their actions. [83049]
Caroline Flint: None of the national health service trusts referred to have dispensed with the national programme for information technology (IT). All remain committed to the programme and its objectives, and to realising the benefits it is already bringing, and will continue to bring to NHS patients and staff.
We have always said that the programme will make maximum use of existing systems when deciding local implementation priorities. We are adopting an incremental approach to replacing existing systems, and this strategy ensures that best use is made of the existing asset base. There is scope within deployment plans in each cluster for existing systems to be replaced in either the shorter or the longer term depending on the circumstances of NHS trusts and primary care trusts locally. It makes no sense to replace prematurely systems with appropriate functionality that are delivering demonstrable benefit to patients and staff when other NHS organisations have systems that are in urgent need of replacement.
This approach to local deployment lies behind decisions made by the Northumbria Healthcare NHS trust, the Dudley Group of Hospitals NHS trust, and the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital NHS trust to defer migration to the patient administration system supplied by the local service provider (LSP). The approach is set out in programme-wide implementation guidance. The guidance which is aimed at providing structured and consistent mechanisms, and describing the critical tasks necessary to maximise benefits from the changes being enabled by the national programme, is published on the Department’s NHS Connecting for Health agency’s website at: www.connectingforhealth.nhs.uk/implementation The circumstances of the South West Yorkshire Mental Health Trust are slightly different.
The trust was established in April 2002 from three separate organisations, and inherited nine different clinical information systems. Due to the complexity of the current systems and the need to consolidate them it is not currently possible for the Trust to be an early development site for the national programme. The trust board has taken a decision to procure an interim clinical information system which will put it in a stronger position to transfer data onto the LSP-delivered system as soon as this becomes available.
NHS organisations that retain use of their existing systems typically incur annual maintenance costs, which are paid locally. These costs are saved following migration to solutions provided under the national programme. Information is not collected centrally about the amounts in each case. However, in the case of the Dudley Group of Hospitals NHS trust, all IT services and applications were included in the trust's overall public finance initiative contract, and no separate IT maintenance costs are payable.
Mr. Stephen O'Brien: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many (a) clinical and (b) administrative IT systems have been installed in the NHS since 2002. [75132]
Caroline
Flint: The period in part predates the deployment of
systems and services through the national programme for information
technology, and comprehensive information is not available. In
particular, information is not held centrally about local information
technology (IT) procurements prior to the national programme, and only
partial information is held about local IT systems commissioned that
are not
within the national programme, such as staff administration and finance
systems.
Available information is given in the table.
| National programme clinical and administrative IT installations as at 13 July 2006 | |||||
| System | Type | Primary | Secondary | Deployment level | Total deployed |
| (1
)Users registered. (2) connections—an
estimated 865,000 users. Note: Clinical systems are those which health care professionals use when
dealing directly with patients that is front office. Administrative
systems are those which support back office facilities for example
email/payments. | |||||
In addition, we are aware that 187 national health service organisations currently use administrative systems to support the electronic staff record, and over 100 NHS trusts use systems provided by NHS Shared Business Services Ltd. (a joint venture between the Department and Xansa) to provide finance and accounting services to the NHS.
The vast majority of NHS locations have to date received new software or hardware via the national programme.
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