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14 Jun 2007 : Column 1324Wcontinued
Mr. Iain Wright: To ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) what plans she has to maximise the amount of time nurses spend on directly caring for patients; [138640]
(2) what plans she has to minimise the paperwork which needs to be completed by nurses as part of their duties; [138641]
(3) what estimate she has made of the proportion of time spent on a shift by a nurse who was assigned to (a) administrative work and (b) caring duties in (i) 1997 and (ii) the latest date for which figures are available. [138644]
Ms Rosie Winterton: No estimates have been made centrally. Nurses work in teams of nursing staff of different grades as well as being members of multi-disciplinary teams. They will spend differing time on patient care according to their roles and responsibilities in the team.
The Chief Nursing Officer (CNO) is working with the National Health Service Institute for Innovation and Improvement and the Royal College of Nursing to promote the spread of good practice being generated by the productive ward programme. The programme will remove processes that distract nurses and will help staff reorganise wards so that the focus is on needs of patients and on easing the workload generated by some activities.
The report of the programme, Releasing Time to Care: Productive Ward, was released by the CNO in April and aims to promote greater efficiency so that more nursing time is released for direct patient care.
Mr. Drew: To ask the Secretary of State for Health whether it is the policy of her Department to support the World Health Organisation definition of water as an important nutrient for the human body and critical to human life. [141211]
Mr. Watson: To ask the Secretary of State for Health if she will publish the minutes of her latest meeting with the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy on physiotherapy graduates. [136714]
Mr. Ivan Lewis: The Secretary of State for Health met the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy on 11 July 2006. There were no formal minutes of the meeting.
Tim Loughton: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what assessment she has made of the effectiveness of the public private partnership for the provision of digital hearing aids; and if she will make a statement. [140655]
Mr. Ivan Lewis: Following a public tendering process, the National Framework Contract (NFC) Public Private Partnership (PPP) with David Ormerod Hearing Centres and Ultravox Holdings plc was announced in October 2003.
The contract allowed national health service trusts to use the two private hearing aid dispensers to see NHS patients.
It was fundamental to the NFC that the quality of service, and hearing aid, that the patient received mirror those of the local NHS audiology department. Quality assurance was key in the initiative. Both companies demonstrated their commitment to meeting these standards and invested resources in terms of equipment, information technology and staff training in order to do so.
The NFC PPP was successful in increasing capacity in the NHS, with over 50,000 patient journeys completed through the partnership. NHS trusts have also benefitted from the competitive pricing and quality of service provision available through the PPP.
Helen Jones: To ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) how much was allocated to Warrington borough council to fund social services in each year since 1997, broken down by funding stream; [141899]
(2) how much funding was allocated to Warrington borough council to provide services for (a) adults with learning difficulties and (b) children and young people with learning difficulties in each year since 1997. [141900]
Mr. Ivan Lewis [holding answer 11 June 2007]: The Government do not make allocations to social care (other than for relatively limited specific grants) but only for local government as a whole.
Within those allocations, it is for local councils to fund and provide appropriate services for their population in the light of local needs and priorities.
Overall, local councils will receive more than £65 billion in 2007-08, a 4.9 per cent. increase on 2006-07.
Mr. Laurence Robertson: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what estimate she has made of the number of people who require organ transplants; how many and what proportion of people requiring donated organs received them in the most recent year for which figures are available; what the shortfall is; and if she will make a statement. [139491]
Ms Rosie Winterton: The number of people registered on the organ transplant list as at 20 May 2007 is shown in table 1. Table 2 shows the number of people joining the list in years 1997, 2000 and 2003 and the percentage that have subsequently received transplants or are still listed.
The transplant list does not reflect the true extent of need for a transplant, as clinicians are reluctant to list more patients than are likely to receive organs.
An organ donation taskforce is currently looking at the barriers to increasing organ donation and will put recommendations to the Department later this year.
Table 1: Registrations for transplant listcurrent (as at 20 May 2007) | |||
Organ | Active | Suspended( 1) | Total |
(1) Suspended means the patient has been temporarily removed from the list. This happens for such reasons as being too ill to undergo the operation or being away on holiday. |
Mr. Hollobone: To ask the Secretary of State for Health when she expects to be in a position to make a decision on the steps her Department will take to reduce the risk of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease transmission via the transfusion of blood from asymptomatic carriers. [142830]
Caroline Flint:
There is currently no validated diagnostic test that would allow blood donors to be assessed as asymptomatic carriers of variant Creutzfeld-Jakob Disease (vCJD). Therefore, together with the National Blood Service, the Department has introduced a range of measures to minimise the possible risk of secondary vCJD infection through the blood supply. In July 1998 the Department announced that plasma for the manufacture of blood products, such as clotting factors, would be obtained from non-United Kingdom sources. Since October 1999, white blood cells (which may carry the greatest risk of transmitting vCJD) have been removed from all blood used in transfusion. In August 2002 the Department announced that fresh frozen plasma for treating babies and young children born after 1 January 1996 would be obtained from the United States of America, and from
summer 2005 this was extended to all children under 16 years of age. In December 2002, the Department completed its purchase of the largest remaining independent USA plasma collector, Life Resources Incorporated to secure long-term supplies of non-UK blood plasma for the benefit of national health service patients. Since April 2004, blood donations have not been accepted from people who have themselves received a blood transfusion in the UK since 1980. This was extended in August 2004 to include apheresis donors and donors who are unsure if they had previously had a blood transfusion. Since late 2005, blood donations have not been accepted from donors whose blood was transfused to patients who later developed vCJD.
The Department will continue to consider further steps to ensure the safety of the blood supply as new evidence or suitable technologies become available.
Mr. Hollobone: To ask the Secretary of State for Health whether a cost/benefit assessment of introducing prion removal blood filters to reduce the transmission of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease via blood transfusion has been undertaken by her Department; and if she will make a statement. [142832]
Caroline Flint: A cost/benefit analysis of introducing prion removal blood filters can only be completed once the Department has received both results of clinical safety trials and the independent evaluation of the effectiveness of the filters in reducing infectivity requested by the Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee and the Advisory Committee on the Microbiological Safety of Blood and Tissues and Organs. The analysis will also need to be informed by the outcome of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease prevalence studies currently under way.
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