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24 Apr 2007 : Column 1042W—continued
Harry Cohen: To ask the Secretary of State for Health if she will make a statement on public funding for hospices. [133192]
Ms Rosie Winterton: The level of funding a hospice receives is a matter for local negotiation between the local primary care trust (PCT), who are responsible for commissioning and funding palliative care services locally, and the hospice.
The Government have delivered on their commitment to make an additional £50 million per annum available for specialist palliative care for adults. This money is now recurrent in PCT baseline allocations. Voluntary sector children's hospices are receiving funding of £27 million between 2006-07 and 2008-09. In addition, an independent review of the long-term sustainability of children's palliative care (including children's hospices) is being undertaken and its findings will be reported to Ministers shortly.
Hospitals: Admissions
Mr. Lansley: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many finished in-year admissions there were in the NHS in each year since 1990-91. [131894]
Andy Burnham: The information on the number of finished in-year admissions is shown in the following table.
| Data year | Finished in-year admission episodes |
| Source: Hospital Episode Statistics (HES). The information Centre for Health and Social Care. | |
Hospitals: ICT
Mr. Lancaster: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many Care Records Service computer systems have been installed in hospitals. [132468]
Caroline Flint [holding answer 19 April 2007]: There are currently 311 hospital-based computer systems deployed through the national programme for information technology that are connected to and use the spine. The spine is the colloquial name given to the national database of key information about patients’ health and care. It forms the core of the national health service care records service (NHS CRS). It also supports other key elements of the national programme for information technology, such as choose and book, the electronic prescriptions service, and general practitioner (GP) to GP record transfer, each of them using the spine’s messaging capabilities as part of their own services.
A further 158 systems already deployed through the programme will in due course be enabled to link to the spine following further future releases of the relevant software.
Independent Treatment Centres
Mr. Laws: To ask the Secretary of State for Health if she will list the phase two independent sector treatment centres being negotiated, broken down by strategic health authority; what stage of negotiation has been reached in each case; how many operations each centre is expected to perform per year; and how many staff each centre is expected to employ. [129884]
Andy Burnham: The information requested has been placed in the Library. The figures and scheme specifications provided are based on current expected total volumes over the contract period. Independent sector treatment centres contracts stipulate the expected case mix and volume of healthcare to be completed during the five year period of the contract. Actual volumes may change depending on the case mixes that are referred.
For schemes at preferred bidder stage, the commercial terms between the Department and the preferred bidder are still under negotiation, and are subject to change.
Kanamycin and Neomycin
Alan Simpson: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what medical uses are permitted of (a) kanamycin and (b) neomycin; and how much of each medicine was used in England in each of the last five years. [128103]
Caroline Flint:
There are no licensed products containing kanamycin in the United Kingdom and
there are no records of kanamycin having been prescribed in the national health service in the last five years.
Neomycin has a number of indications and is licensed both on its own and in combination with steroids and other anti-infectives as follows:
in combination with betamethasone (a steroid) for:
the short-term treatment of steroid responsive inflammatory conditions of the eye when prophylactic antibiotic treatment is also required, after excluding the presence of viral and fungal disease;
otitis externa or other steroid responsive conditions of the ear where prophylactic antibiotic treatment is also required;
steroid-responsive inflammatory conditions of the nose where prophylactic antibiotic treatment is also required;
for the treatment of the following conditions where secondary bacterial infection is present, suspected, or likely to occur:
eczema in adults and children (aged 2 years and over), including
atopic and discoid eczemas;
prurigo nodularis;
psoriasis (excluding widespread plaque psoriasis);
neurodermatoses including lichen simplex and lichen planus;
seborrhoeic dermatitis;
contact sensitivity reactions;
insect bite reactions;
anal and genital intertrigo.
in combination with bacitracin (an anti-bacterial) for:
superficial bacterial infection of the skin, such as impetigo, varicose ulcers, pressure sores, trophic ulcers and burns.
in combination with dexamethasone (a steroid) and polymyxin B (an anti-bacterial) for:
the short-term treatment of steroid responsive conditions of the eye when prophylactic antibiotic treatment is also required, after excluding the presence of fungal and viral disease.
in combination with chlorhexidine gluconate as a nasal cream for:
the eradication of nasal infection with, and carriage of, staphylococci.
with triamcinolone acetonide (a steroid), gramicidin and nystatin (anti-infectives) for:
the treatment of corticosteroid sensitive dermatoses complicated by infections due to micro-organisms sensitive to the anti-infectives.
pre-operative sterilisation of the bowel. It may also be useful in the treatment of impending hepatic coma, including portal systemic encephalopathy.
Usage of neomycin in England is shown in the following table.
Members: Correspondence
Mr. Baron: To ask the Secretary of State for Health when she expects to reply to the hon. Member for Billericay's letter dated 8 March concerning Mr. O'Reilly. [133759]
Mr. Ivan Lewis: I regret the letter was not received by the Department. If the hon. Member would forward a copy, I will arrange for it to be dealt with urgently.
Mental Health Services: Children
Annette Brooke: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what her Department’s estimated funding is for child and adolescent mental health services in each of the next five years; and what objectives she has set for the use of such funding. [130305]
Mr. Ivan Lewis: In December 2005 the Department announced that £88.214 million will be allocated to local authorities in 2007-08 via the child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) grant. This grant is to be used by local authorities to improve CAMHS, in accordance with local needs and priorities, as set out in local CAMHS development strategies. In 2006-07, £50 million was made available to strategic health authorities for CAMHS as part of a larger bundle of revenue funding for the national health service. The annual CAMHS mapping exercise shows that overall expenditure on specialist CAMHS increased from £431million in 2004-05 to a projected £513 million in 2005-06, an increase of 19 per cent.
Funding for CAMHS beyond 2007-08 is being considered as part of the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR). It is anticipated that details of the CSR settlement will be announced in autumn 2007.
Multiple Sclerosis: Charities
Sir Peter Soulsby: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what assessment she has made of the effects of fees for annual inspections from the Healthcare Commission on charitable not-for-profit multiple sclerosis therapy centres. [121448]
Andy Burnham: Annual fees to cover the cost of providing assessment and registration services are approved by the Secretary of State for Health, after consideration of proposals submitted by the Healthcare Commission. Assessment of the effects of fees is therefore for the Commission in the first instance.
The Healthcare Commission consulted on its 2007-08 independent healthcare sector fee proposals between 20 December 2006 and 20 February 2007. I understand from the Chairman of the Commission that during the consultation period it received numerous representations from providers asking that fees should be reduced for hospices and voluntarily funded establishments using type 3 hyperbaric oxygen chambers.
The Healthcare Commission revised its proposals after considering the comments it received. For 2007-08, annual fees for multiple sclerosis therapy centres have been reduced from £1,566 to £1,225, a reduction of 22 per cent. This is the first time that regulatory fees under the Care Standards Act 2000 have been reduced. Fees for first time registrations have increased from £907 to £990.
NHS Direct
Mr. Lansley: To ask the Secretary of State for Health pursuant to the answer of 14 March 2007, Official Report, columns 442-43W, on NHS Direct, what the average cost per call to NHS Direct was in the most recent period for which figures are available in the same format as that provided in the answer to the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) of 8 September 2003, Official Report, column 236W, on NHS Direct. [131885]
Andy Burnham: The information requested is not held centrally. This is a matter for the chief executive of the new NHS Direct NHS Trust.
NHS Treatment Centres: Private Sector
Norman Lamb: To ask the Secretary of State for Health when the Healthcare Commission expects to publish its interim report on the review of independent sector treatment centres. [133204]
Andy Burnham [holding answer 23 April 2007]: I understand the Healthcare Commission (HC) has decided not to publish an interim report on the quality of clinical care provided by the independent sector treatment centres (ISTCs) because of problems with the quality and coverage of the initial ISTC data. They took the view that publishing an interim report would present only a partial and confusing picture of the findings of the review. As a result of the improvement in the data quality and completeness of the ISTC submissions, the HC felt that the review would be best serviced by focusing efforts on producing the final report, not an interim publication.
NHS: Complaints
Dr. Cable: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many (a) second and (b) third stage complaints have been processed through the NHS complaints procedure in each of the last five years. [128720]
Andy Burnham: Since July 2004 to date, the Healthcare Commission has responsibility for independent review (the second stage of the national health service complaints process) of complaints which have not been satisfactorily resolved by the provider at the first stage. Prior to July 2004, the NHS itself was responsible for reviewing complaints at the second stage, through independent review panels. Therefore the sets of data have been collected by two separate organisations, produced in different ways and consequently are not directly comparable. The Healthcare Commission has provided the following information on cases received for review, and numbers completed:
| Received | Completed | |
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