§ Mr. Knoxasked the Secretary of State for Social Services what is the doctor to patient ratio in the area covered by the Staffordshire, Moorlands parliamentary constituency; and what is the comparable doctor to patient ratio in England and Wales.
§ Mr. HayhoeManpower statistics cover staff working in hospitals and are collected at a particular point in time; but they do not show what activities within the hospital the staff are engaged upon—for example, whether they are providing treatment to in-patients, out-patients or accident and emergency patients. By contrast, activity statistics show the number of cases treated during the year in National Health Service hospitals divided into day cases, in-patient and out-patient cases (including accident and emergency cases). Any overall staff: patient ratio is therefore a crude measure and does not take into account varying factors such as age of patients and types or complexity of treatment given. It is, however, possible to give a ratio in terms of the population being served although these figures cannot be broken down on the basis of parliamentary constituencies. At 1 October 1985 the number of hospital and community health service doctors, measured in whole time equivalents, was 85.8 per 100,000 population for England and Wales and 78.5 per 100,000 201W population for the area covered by the West Midlands regional health authority. At the same date the number of patients on a general practitioner's list in England and Wales averaged 2,059 and 2,093 in Staffordshire.
If my hon. Friend wants more detailed local information about hospital doctors and general practitioners, he may wish to write to the chairmen of the West Midlands regional health authority and the Staffordshire family practitioner committee respectively who may be able to help him.