The new National Stroke Strategy, announced in December, will modernise services and deliver the newest treatments for stroke across England. The strategy emphasises the need to improve access to scans and stipulates that brain imaging should be performed in the next scan slot, or within 60 minutes of request out of hours. We are asking all local stroke networks to ensure that any patient who could benefit from urgent care should be transferred to an acute stroke centre that provides 24-hour access to scans and other specialist stroke care.
The national health service is funded to implement the strategy. We have fully costed the proposals in the strategy, and this will be reflected in the allocation which goes to primary care trusts for next year. In addition, we have committed new central funds totalling £105 million over the next three years. Some of that new funding will be used to develop demonstration sites for acute services which will enable us to not only show a step change in service provision in those areas, but to provide lessons that can be shared. The £105 million is central funding—on top of money going into the NHS to support this change.