Asked by: Lord Willis of Knaresborough (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the impact of using paper-based systems for prescribing medicines on the efficacy of homecare medicines services.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
An assessment, through a commissioned piece of user-research of homecare paper-based prescribing, was done during the COVID-19 pandemic. NHS England will use the information in this assessment to understand the issues in homecare, as well as to inform future improvement actions, particularly developing and adoption of the Electronic Prescription Service (EPS).
No assessment has been made of the impact of requirements under the Human Medicines Regulations 2012. The only advanced electronic signature (AES) is through EPS. Not many e-prescribing systems used in secondary care have the capability to meet this AES requirement.
Asked by: Lord Willis of Knaresborough (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the impact of requirements under the Human Medicines Regulations 2012 (SI 2012/1916) for prescriptions to have either a wet signature or an advanced electronic signature on the efficiency of homecare medicines services.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
An assessment, through a commissioned piece of user-research of homecare paper-based prescribing, was done during the COVID-19 pandemic. NHS England will use the information in this assessment to understand the issues in homecare, as well as to inform future improvement actions, particularly developing and adoption of the Electronic Prescription Service (EPS).
No assessment has been made of the impact of requirements under the Human Medicines Regulations 2012. The only advanced electronic signature (AES) is through EPS. Not many e-prescribing systems used in secondary care have the capability to meet this AES requirement.
Asked by: Lord Willis of Knaresborough (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to improve interoperability of (1) NHS information management systems, and (2) homecare medicines services information management systems.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
An Information Standard Notice (ISN) which puts in place definitions that are to be used when a health professional sends or receives patient medication and allergy/intolerance information, by computer system, between care locations, has been published under section 250 of the Health and Social Care Act 2012.
The purpose is to ensure that medication and allergy information is transferred between systems and locations in a machine-readable format. This will be achieved by: transferring medication information using the newest version for the United Kingdom of Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resource, by use of either ‘Medication Codable Concept’ or ‘Medication Resource’ as is most appropriate to the use case; usage of dose syntax to transfer the amount of medication per dose as a simple coded quantity; and transferring allergy/intolerance information using Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine Clinical Terms and dictionary of medicines and devices codes.
All clinical IT systems that will be used for prescribing homecare medicines will be required to be compliant with this ISN.
Asked by: Lord Willis of Knaresborough (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to enable prescriptions to be shared electronically between (1) NHS services, and (2) homecare medicines service providers.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The National Homecare Medicines Committee’s (NHMC) vision for digital transformation, including e-prescribing in homecare, is available in a short video in an online-only format on the YouTube website. The digital subgroup of the NHMC is working with the National Health Service, Electronic Prescribing and Medicines Administration (ePMA) systems vendors and homecare providers to produce an output-based specification for an Electronic Prescribing System (EPS), particularly focusing on the technical aspects of homecare requirements for EPS. This will include interoperable prescribing systems. Any ePMA systems used in secondary care need to be Dictionary of medicines and devices compliant and this applies for homecare medicines too; this is needed to support interoperability.
The output-based specification aims to standardise requirements in homecare medicines e-prescribing, accelerating adoption of e-prescribing system development in homecare. This specification is undergoing final review by NHS England before publication by the NHMC.
Asked by: Lord Willis of Knaresborough (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government when they anticipate all NHS Trusts to have implemented Electronic Prescribing and Medicines Administration systems.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent focus on recovery has seen some National Health Service trusts delay implementing Electronic Prescribing and Medication Administration, meaning the timeline for implementation has been pushed to 2025. However, the implementation of e-prescribing in NHS trusts remains a key and appropriate deliverable as part of the vision to digitally transform the NHS. Additionally, the Electronic Prescription Service, which has been widely used in primary care over the past 18 years, is being made available to all NHS trusts by March 2025, should they want to utilise it.
Asked by: Lord Willis of Knaresborough (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what is the estimated cost of VAT to the NHS applied to the purchase of patient drugs in each of the past five financial years.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The information requested is not held centrally.