Chronic Illnesses

(asked on 13th November 2017) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what discussions he has had with Public Health England on improving the health and well-being of people living with multiple, serious long-term health conditions.


Answered by
Steve Brine Portrait
Steve Brine
This question was answered on 16th November 2017

Ministers routinely meet the system leaders to discuss a broad range of issues concerning population health, including multiple, serious long-term health conditions.

In 2016, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) published a new best practice guideline on the assessment and management of multimorbidity. Aimed at clinicians, it is designed to put patients with complex health issues at the heart of decisions about their care, including how to decide between different medicines and treatments. NICE has also published a separate guideline to reduce problematic polypharmacy in patients with multimorbidity that aims to ensure that medicines provide the greatest possible benefit to people by encouraging medicines reconciliation, medication review, and the use of patient decision aids. Both sets of guidance can be found at the following links:

www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng56/resources/multimorbidity-clinical-assessment-and-management-pdf-1837516654789

www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng5/resources/medicines-optimisation-the-safe-and-effective-use-of-medicines-to-enable-the-best-possible-outcomes-pdf-51041805253

In meeting the needs of patients with multimorbidity, NHS England’s Next steps on the Five Year Forward View, published in March 2017, sets out progress and action in range of areas including increasing the number of clinical pharmacists working in general practitioner (GP) surgeries from almost 500 to over 900 by March 2018 and over 1,300 by March 2019, improving medicines management and patient care and freeing up GP time to focus on those patients with complex needs who need it most. The next steps publication can be found at the following link:

www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/NEXT-STEPS-ON-THE-NHS-FIVE-YEAR-FORWARD-VIEW.pdf

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