Reading Liberal Democrats

The Royal Berkshire Hospital is among 80% of NHS hospital Trusts who have no idea whether they have treated any veterans under the Government’s priority treatment scheme, according to research by the Liberal Democrats.

Freedom Of Information requests sent to England’s 170 Acute Trusts found that, of the 118 which responded, 94 had no records or did not collect information on the effectiveness or results of the scheme. This included the Royal Berkshire Hospital.

The research also found that:

• Five Acute Trusts were unaware of the scheme or did not have it in place
• One said they were still awaiting guidance from the MOD
• One said they had knowledge of only 1 veteran having been considered for priority treatment
• Just three were able to provide figures – 2 of these had recorded a single patient each, while the third had treated 15 under the scheme in 10 years

Requests were also sent to 146 PCTs, of which 84 replied. Of these:

• 67 (including Berkshire West PCT) had no records or don’t collect the information.
• Three were able to provide figures – of these two had recorded one patient under the scheme, the other had had two requests.
• One said they were unaware of the scheme.

Commenting, Liberal Democrat prospective MP for Reading East, Cllr Gareth Epps, said:

“Veterans who have put their lives on the line for this country deserve better. If this priority treatment scheme is to be more than meaningless spin, Ministers need to get their act together. They need to ensure that this scheme starts to deliver.

“These findings provide no comfort that the Government veterans’ treament scheme is functioning. How can anyone have any confidence that Labour takes veterans’ treatment seriously if our local NHS Trusts have no idea of numbers treated or results?”

Editor’s Notes:

1. A spreadsheet is available on request giving a full breakdown of responses by Acute Trust and by Primary Care Trust.
2. The first Annual Report on the Governments’ Command Paper on services provided to the Forces, their families and veterans, published on 19 November, reported that:
   • The Royal British Legion considers that ‘little effective progress has been made in the past year’ on the veterans’ priority treatment scheme, with delivery remaining inadequate and awareness low.
   • In England and Wales, 33% of GPs questioned knew nothing at all about priority treatment for War Pensioners
   • Of those GPs who had heard of priority treatment, most (58%) heard about it from the media, 7% from the Service Personnel and Veterans Agency or elsewhere in the MOD, and 16% via the NHS
   • 10% of GPs who had heard of priority treatment had informed secondary care providers of a veteran’s entitlement to priority treatment in the previous 12 months See pp 23-4 of the 2009 report

3. Further information on the veterans’ priority treatment scheme can be found on the Government’s Veterans UK site
4. Berkshire West PCT’s response reads as follows:- ‘
   With regard to requests made to the PCT for funding of individual treatment that the requests we have recorded on our systems (which – to reiterate – would relate only to those treatments where the service is not routinely funded and therefore the case for exceptionality needs to be considered by the PCT) are not categorised to include war veteran status. It is therefore not possible to supply this information related to individual funding requests.’
5. The Royal Berkshire NHS Trust replied as follows:- ‘This information is not recorded on any Trust Information System.’