Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of medication being administered when required for patients rather than automatically dispensing repeat prescriptions.

The Department has not made an assessment on the potential merits of medication being administered when required for patients rather than automatically dispensing repeat prescriptions.

The approach NHS England is taking in respect of medicines optimisation is outlined in the document Next Steps on the Five Year Forward View, published in March this year. This sets out that four Regional Medicines Optimisation Committees (RMOCs) will coordinate the pursuit of medicines optimisation opportunities, including in care homes, multiple prescribing, use of generics and biosimilars, and reducing medicines wastage.

The RMOCs became operational in April and activity for each RMOC currently focuses on priorities identified for delivery through the Medicines Optimisation workstream of NHS England's Medicines Value Programme.