Hearing Aids (Hansard, 18 June 2002)

§ Sandra Gidley
To ask the Secretary of State for Health if a patient with an NHS-provided digital hearing aid is entitled to a replacement digital hearing and continued support with it if they move from living within an NHS trust that routinely provides digital hearing aids to an NHS trust that provides only analogue hearing aids. [61079]

§ Jacqui Smith
If the services commissioned by a trust locally do not meet the needs of a particular patient, then general practitioners (GPs) do have freedom to refer elsewhere using the out of area arrangements. If a patient requires replacement of a national health service digital hearing aid, and the local service has not received the training and equipment to fit such aids, the GP could refer the patient back to the department from which the aid was supplied or to an other which d es have the necessary infrastructure to fit digital hearing aids.
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§ Sandra Gidley
To ask the Secretary of State for Health when each of the NHS trusts that have been selected to become part of the modernising hearing aid services project will start routinely issuing digital hearing aids. [61080]

§ Jacqui Smith
The modernising hearing aid services project is being managed on the Department's behalf by the Royal National Institute for the Deaf. The project management team has contacted each of the 30 sites which will be joining the project this calendar year and are in discussion with and in the process of visiting each service. The current service is assessed (obtaining details of the sites involved, staffing, information technology needs etc.), the new service discussed and a timetable for modernisation agreed. The first of these sites should have new systems in place and staff trained and fitting digital hearing aids by the beginning of October and all 30 should be fitting them by the end of March 2003.

§ Mr. Swayne
To ask the Secretary of State for Health what initial investment is required of NHS trusts in order to apply for funding for the provision of digital hearing aids; and if he will make a statement. [61515]

§ Jacqui Smith
When deciding which national health service trusts would join the modernising hearing aid services project in 2002–03, we wrote to all trusts not involved in the first wave of the project, inviting them to express an interest in becoming a second wave site. We asked that any such expressions of interest should be signed by the appropriate primary care trusts who would be expected to contribute 25 per cent. of additional staffing costs and 25 per cent. of any additional cost incurred in supplying digital rather than analogue aids.
Applicants were informed that sites would be selected on the basis of preparedness, willingness to improve access for patients by providing some services from a community base, whether they were paediatric audiology departments transferring patients to existing adult sites, whether they had interest in and willingness to implement universal new-born hearing screening and bearing in mind the need to provide reasonable geographical spread of sites across the country.
Sites must have the appropriate infrastructure, information technology equipment and trained staff, before they can fit digital hearing aids.