Asked by: Kevin Barron (Labour - Rother Valley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the current balance of the pharmacy integration fund is; and what initiatives have been supported by that fund since its inception.
Answered by Seema Kennedy
NHS England and NHS Improvement are awaiting the completion of the annual audit of its accounts, therefore no final figure is currently available for the balance of the Pharmacy Integration Fund (PhIF). The PhIF has supported a range of initiatives, including:
- Recruitment and training of pharmacists to support integrated urgent care services, offering patients and care staff direct access to clinical advice and care from pharmacists;
- Putting pharmacists and pharmacy technicians into the multi-disciplinary teams delivering enhanced health in care homes, to support medicines optimisation for people who live in care homes;
- The development of an urgent medicines supply service. This connects people who contact NHS 111 for urgent access to medicines with local community pharmacies who are able to dispense, and redirects demand out of general practitioner out of hours services, and/or accident and emergency departments;
- The piloting of a minor illness service, which enables people who contact NHS 111 to get urgent care and advice from a local community pharmacy for a range of common illness complaints; and
- Providing leadership training for the profession to support them to work effectively with their partners in the emerging integrated care systems, with a focus on delivering the range of benefits of medicines optimisation.
Further information can be found on NHS England’s website and accessed via the following link:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/primary-care/pharmacy/pharmacy-integration-fund/
Asked by: Kevin Barron (Labour - Rother Valley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate his Department has made of the average number of hours general practitioners spend on writing NHS prescriptions in England per week.
Answered by Seema Kennedy
The data requested is not collected or held centrally.
Asked by: Kevin Barron (Labour - Rother Valley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much was spent on delivering the NHS England Stay Well Pharmacy campaign; and over what time period those funds were spent.
Answered by Seema Kennedy
The most recent NHS England ‘Pharmacy Advice’ campaign - previously called the Stay Well Pharmacy campaign - ran between 4 February and 17 March 2019. We are informed by NHS England that the overall cost of running the advertising campaign was £2 million.
Asked by: Kevin Barron (Labour - Rother Valley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of (a) the implementation costs and (b) potential benefits of community pharmacists having write access to NHS patient records.
Answered by Seema Kennedy
The Department has made no assessment of the implementation costs of providing write access to patient records. However, in future, our ambition is for pharmacists to play an even greater role within the National Health Service and we understand that write access to NHS patient records will support this.
Providing read and write access to general practitioner (GP) records for pharmacists is complex. In some areas medical records are already shared between professionals to support locally commissioned services. To develop a national solution Departmental officials, NHS England and NHS Digital have considered important issues such as technical requirements, data standards, patient consent and data security to provide write access. Work is progressing and during 2019 pilots will commence to test that digital transfer can successfully take place between community pharmacy and GP IT systems.
Asked by: Kevin Barron (Labour - Rother Valley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what funding his Department has allocated to (a) the Community Pharmacy Referral Scheme and (b) the Digital Illness Referral Service in each fiscal year since the programmes have been in operation.
Answered by Seema Kennedy
In December 2016, a new referral scheme to community pharmacy was initiated from NHS 111 to community pharmacy in response to urgent requests for medication. This has been running as a pilot with national coverage achieved by June 2017 with over 4,000 pharmacies now registered to deliver the service. This pilot is named as the NHS Urgent Medicines Supply Advanced Service (NUMSAS) within the community pharmacy contractual framework running until October 2019.
From December 2017, a further scheme started in the North East enabling the referral of patients from NHS 111 to community pharmacy for a community pharmacist consultation about minor illness symptoms. This pilot known as the Digital Minor Illness Referral Service (DMIRS) was extended to Devon, London and the East Midlands from December 2018 and is continuing until October 2019. Over 2,000 pharmacies are registered to deliver the minor illness service.
Both schemes are funded by the Pharmacy Integration Fund with the audited spend provided by NHS England as follows:
| NUMSAS | DMIRS |
2016/17 | £9,600 | - |
2017/18 | £1,190,401 | £250,000 |
The audited spend for 2018/19 is not yet available.
Asked by: Kevin Barron (Labour - Rother Valley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the guidance published by NHS England, Items which should not routinely be prescribed in primary care: Guidance for CCGs, what estimate his Department has made of the number of patients that have been refused prescriptions for over-the-counter medicines by their GP since the publication of that guidance.
Answered by Seema Kennedy
The Department has made no assessment of the number of patients refused prescriptions for over the counter medicines.
Asked by: Kevin Barron (Labour - Rother Valley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment the Government has made of the effectiveness of the implementation of the guidance entitled Items which should not be routinely prescribed in primary care: Guidance for CCGs.
Answered by Seema Kennedy
We are informed by NHS England that in the period up to and including October 2018, spend on the 18 low priority medicines has fallen by £31.1 million from £133.6 million, compared to 2016/17. This represents a reduction of 23%.
The volume of medicines prescribed reduced by 27% and the number of patients prescribed these medicines reduced by 32%.
In addition, NHS England has worked with PrescQIPP and the NHS Business Services Authority to refine its assessment of the amount of money spent on over the counter medicines.
In the 12 months to January 2019, the total National Health Service spend in England on over the counter medicines was £449.4 million. This was a saving on total spend of £25.9 million from the 12 months to January 2018, which was £475.3 million. This saving does not account for the potential impact to the NHS from a reduced number of general practitioner appointments, for which no assessment has been made.
These savings will be reinvested into the NHS, ensuring patients can access high quality care now and in the future.
Asked by: Kevin Barron (Labour - Rother Valley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the saving to the NHS of reducing the number of prescriptions for over-the-counter medicines.
Answered by Seema Kennedy
The Department has made no such assessment. From December 2017 to March 2018, NHS England carried out a public consultation on reducing prescribing of over-the-counter medicines for minor, short-term health concerns, ‘Conditions for which over the counter items should not routinely be prescribed in primary care: A consultation on guidance for CCGs’ which can be found at the following link:
https://www.engage.england.nhs.uk/consultation/over-the-counter-items-not-routinely-prescribed/
At the end of March 2018, NHS England published guidance to enable savings of up to £100 million for frontline care each year by curbing prescriptions for ‘over the counter’ medicines. The guidance does not affect prescribing of over the counter items for longer term or more complex conditions, or where minor illnesses are symptomatic or a side effect of something more serious.
We are informed by NHS England that in the 12 months to January 2019, the total National Health Service spend in England on over the counter items was £449.4 million. This was a saving on total spend of £25.9 million from the corresponding figure for the 12 months to January 2018, which was £475.3 million. This saving does not account for the potential impact to the NHS from a reduced number of general practitioner appointments, for which no assessment has been made.
Asked by: Kevin Barron (Labour - Rother Valley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 14 February 2019 to Question 219373 on UK Antimicrobial Resistance Diagnostics Collaborative, what representations his Department has received from members of that Collaborative; if he will publish the names of its members; and whether a Chair of that Collaborative has been appointed.
Answered by Steve Brine
NHS England established the United Kingdom Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) Diagnostics Collaborative in 2018 to deliver the UK’s diagnostic ambitions for AMR. The Collaborative has played a valuable role in developing the diagnostic elements of the new five-year UK AMR national action plan, published in January this year.
The work of the Collaborative contributes directly to the Government’s commitments on AMR, and the Collaborative’s secretariat communicates with the Department on a regular basis and it has been represented by its secretariat and former chair in the UK AMR Programme’s governance groups.
The Collaborative’s chair remains vacant while NHS England develops detailed plans to support the implementation of the new national plan on AMR. As part of this work, the membership of the Collaborative is under review.
Current membership is drawn from a range of stakeholders across Government and its agencies, the devolved administrations, the health system, veterinary medicine, professional bodies, academia, the research community and industry. Members at or above ‘very senior manager’ (VSM) level and partner agencies involved in the Collaborative are listed in the following table.
Members of the UK Antimicrobial Resistance Diagnostics Collaborative at or above VSM level | Organisation |
Mohamed Sadak | Health Education England |
Marion Lyons | Welsh Government |
Gerry Waldron | Public Health Agency Northern Ireland |
Neil Woodford | Public Health England |
Partner Agencies | |
NHS Scotland | NHS England |
NHS Sheffield Clinical Commissioning Group | Department of Health and Social Care |
NHS Improvement | University of Bristol |
Institute of Biomedical Science | Association of Clinical Biochemistry and Laboratory Medicine |
UK Standards for Microbiology Investigations | Royal College of Pathology |
Royal College of General Practice | National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) Medical Technology Guidance |
Sherwood Forrest NHS Foundation Trust | Royal College of Nursing |
University of Surrey | Addenbrookes Hospital NHS Trust |
University of Edinburgh | Medical Research Council |
British In Vitro Diagnostic Association | NIHR Community Healthcare MedTech and In Vitro Diagnostics Co-operative |
Innovate UK | NICE |
Royal Cornwall Hospital | Kingston University |
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs | Responsible Use of Medicines in Agriculture Alliance |
University of Liverpool | Ulster University |
University of Exeter | Westpoint Farm Vets |
University of Nottingham | Centre for Ecology and Hydrology |
Cardiff University | Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital NHS Foundation Trust |
Glasgow Caledonian University |
|
Asked by: Kevin Barron (Labour - Rother Valley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, when he plans to bring forward legislative proposal for a state-backed indemnity scheme for health care professionals.
Answered by Steve Brine
The National Health Service (Clinical Negligence Scheme for General Practice) Regulations 2019 were laid in parliament on 25 February 2019 and come into force on 1 April 2019. The Regulations establish a scheme which provides indemnity cover for future clinical negligence liabilities of general practitioners, and others working in general practice in respect of services provided as part of the National Health Service in England.
The Department also intends to establish the arrangements for an existing liabilities scheme in April 2019, subject to satisfactory discussions with the Medical Defence Organisations.