§ Mr. ChopeTo ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) how many people are waiting for the fitting of hearing aids in each primary care trust, having already had an assessment; and what the average time between assessment and fitting has been in the last 12 months; [144999]
(2) what service standards he has set for NHS audiology services, with particular reference to the length of time for which patients for audiology services wait; and what action the Government is taking to improve performance against standards; [145034]
(3) if he will make it the policy of the Government that those who have been waiting for more than six months for an (a) audiology hearing assessment and (b) audiology assessment should be able to have such assessments (i) carried out privately and paid for by the NHS and (ii) carried out overseas at NHS expense; [145049]
(4) if he will list in respect of each primary care trust the number of people waiting for a hearing assessment, and the number waiting for more than six months. [145052]
§ Dr. Ladyman[holding answer 18 December 2003]: While there are no targets for waiting times for audiology services, we are taking action to tackle the causes of longer waits as part of our programme to modernise hearing aid services in England.
The modernisation project team at the Royal National Institute for Deaf People and the Action On team from the NHS Modernisation Agency are working with sites to help them reduce waiting times. In this financial year, we are investing £1.56 million in specific initiatives to increase the capacity of individual audiology departments. We are introducing a new, more streamlined patient process in modernised sites. We are looking at ways to increase the number of trained audiologists in the longer term and are encouraging partnerships between national health service trusts and high street registered hearing aid dispensers to increase 178W capacity and make NHS hearing aids available, free of charge, from an increasing number of convenient locations.