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29 Nov 2006 : Column 786Wcontinued
Mr. Ruffley: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what the average travelling distance is to a 24-hour accident and emergency department. [101347]
Ms Rosie Winterton: The information requested is not collected centrally.
Mr. Ruffley: To ask the Secretary of State for Health which hospitals situated in towns or cities with populations over 30,000 people (a) do and (b) do not have a 24-hour accident and emergency department. [101348]
Ms Rosie Winterton: The information requested is not available centrally.
Mr. Ruffley: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many 24-hour accident and emergency departments there are in each primary care trust area in England. [101349]
Ms Rosie Winterton: Information is not collected centrally in the format requested.
Mr. Maude: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many new acute hospital projects of more than 300 beds have been approved since 1 June 2006, and how many are being financed by the private finance initiative. [100776]
Andy Burnham: Since 1 June 2006, six acute hospital project schemes have been approved to proceed from the private finance initiative (PFI) reappraisal exercise. Four of these contain proposals for more than 300 beds.
The PFI schemes for St. Helens and Knowsley Hospitals National Health Service Trust (capital value £338 million) and the University Hospital Birmingham NHS Trust (capital value £627 million) had their full
business cases approved and reached financial close on or after 1 June 2006. Both schemes will deliver more than 300 beds each.
Mr. Carswell: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what the waiting time is to see an audiologist for patients living in Tendring; and how many people in Tendring are waiting to see an audiologist. [101573]
Mr. Ivan Lewis: The number of patients waiting for all audiology tests is not available. The number of patients waiting for pure tone audiometry tests are shown in the table.
Waiting times for pure tone audiometry at Tendring primary care trust, September 2006 | |
Number | |
Mr. Carswell: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many audiologists there are working for the NHS in Tendring; and how many were working in each of the last five years. [101574]
Mr. Ivan Lewis: Information is not available in the format requested. The following table shows the number of audiology staff employed in Essex by national health service trusts and in England for 2004 and 2005 as data was not collected prior to 2004.
Tim Loughton: To ask the Secretary of State for Health whether the Government plan to appoint a single preferred national bidder to provide the 300,000 audiology patient pathways; and if she will make a statement. [101829]
Mr. Ivan Lewis: Discussions with local national health service commissioners, to ensure that the audiology procurement best meets their needs, are ongoing. It is anticipated, however, that the procurement may be divided into a number of geographical regions, encompassing several strategic health authorities, each served by a single supplier if this offers value for money to the NHS.
Tim Loughton: To ask the Secretary of State for Health whether the Government plan for the additional 300,000 audiology patient pathways to be procured through the ISTC Phase 2 programme; whether funding has been ring-fenced for the procurement of these 300,000 pathways; and if she will make a statement. [101830]
Mr. Ivan Lewis: The audiology procurement is one of the procurements within the independent sector treatment centre (ISTC) phase 2 programme. Overall, it is expected that the next phase of the programme will deliver £3 billion of elective services and £1 billion of diagnostic services per annum. The audiology procurement will contribute towards these values.
The funding for services procured through the ISTC programme is held by local commissioners. Primary care trusts will agree local demand for audiology services and confirm the scheme is affordable within the context of their own resources before the procurement is advertised.
Mr. Ruffley: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what the projected cost of running and administering the East of England strategic health authority is in (a) 2006-07 and (b) 2007-08. [101344]
Andy Burnham: The merger of Essex, Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire, Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire strategic health authorities has resulted in the newly formed NHS East of England inheriting a budget of £15.8 million for the financial year 2006-07. The budget for 2007-08 has not yet been agreed by the Department for the next financial year.
Mr. Jim Cunningham: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what steps her Department is taking to promote equality and diversity in the NHS. [104192]
Ms Rosie Winterton: The Department has undertaken a number of activities to promote equality and diversity in the national health service and particularly to support the NHS in meeting its responsibilities under the various equality legislation on race, disability and gender as well as regulations on age, religion and belief and sexual orientation. The Department's strategy for promoting equality and diversity in the NHS is to set action on these issues within the overall framework for planning and delivering the Department's and NHS's priorities.
The Department has a detailed programme of work under way to take forward equality and human rights commitments which includes the following.
We are working with inspectorate bodies and equality commissions to ensure that equality and human rights issues are integrated into inspection arrangements and relevant sector specific guidance provided to help the health sector promote equality issues.
Delivering Race Equality in Mental Health Care (DRE) is an action plan for reform of NHS mental health servicesworking towards equality of access, equality of experience and equality of outcome for all mental health service users. DREs programme of change consists of three main building blocks: more appropriate and response services, community engagement and better information. As part of the DRE programme the Department commissioned the Healthcare Commission, in partnership with the Mental Health Act Commission, to undertake an annual census of ethnicity of mental health in- patients.
The race for health programme is primary care trust-led with support from the Department equality and human rights group. It convenes a network of 14 PCTs around the country, working in partnership with local black and minority ethnic communities to improve health, modernise services, increase choice and create greater diversity within the NHS work force. Race for health also disseminates examples of good practice across the NHS and recently published Towards Race Equality in Health: A Guide to Policy and Good Practice for Commissioning Services. Plans are under way to recruit a new wave of PCTs to the programme.
The pacesetters programme is headed by the equality and human rights group. This programme places equality at the heart of NHS business, organisational objectives and core values, impacting upon future health planning, performance management and delivery. The group is working with up to five SHAs to deliver equality and diversity improvements and innovations resulting in:
patient and user involvement in the design and delivery of services;
reduced health inequalities for patients and service users;
working environments that are fair and free of discrimination.
The participating SHAs are launching their local involvement in the programme from November 2006; developing and publishing Promoting Equality and Human Rights in the NHSa Guide for Board Members aimed at helping non-executive board members take forward the issues of equality and human rights with regard to patients and the work force. The guide outlines the legislative framework and the principles that underpin equality and human rights. It demonstrates the business case for promoting and delivering equality and human rights, and includes a set of prompts for boards to take stock of how fairly their organisations treat their patients and workforce. The guide is currently being revised to incorporate current and imminent legislation and will extend to include all board members not just non-executive directors. This should be available at the end of 2006;
The leadership and race equality action plan (LREAP) is a 10-point action plan launched in February 2004. LREAP is aimed at NHS chief executives and their boards with a specific focus on health services and outcomes and challenging them to pay greater attention to meeting the service needs of people from ethnic minorities and making equality issues an important dimension of NHS strategy. A revised LREAP will be integrated into an NHS leadership document that is currently being developed;
The Department is working with external lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) stakeholders on the development and implementation of a sexual orientation and gender identity equality strategy. A sexual orientation and gender identity advisory group is assisting with this work;
The Department's equality and human rights group is leading a project aimed at supporting the equalities agenda through the development of single equality schemes (SES) in the NHS. The project has been set up in anticipation of possible further duties in relation to age, religion and belief and sexual orientation and plans to encourage work to pull together the different equality strands without compromising any of the individual elements in a cross-cutting and coherent fashion. Project leads provide support in terms of expertise in the field of equalities legislation, facilitating partnerships and joined-up working, research, sharing of good practice and producing guidance. Project leads also provide specific guidance on the disability and gender duties respectively. The organisations involved are committed to producing a single equality scheme and will collectively produce learning that identifies the different steps required to meet both the current and likely duties which will be meaningful to the host of diverse organisations within the NHS. Development and outcomes from all the programmes outlined above will be shared and disseminated throughout the NHS;
The Mosaic project was established by the Department of Health in 2004 to promote race equality through and in procurement. The project focuses on three main areas:
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