Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to help reduce overprescribing.

Overprescribing can be addressed by taking a shared decision making approach and optimising a person's medicines; ensuring that patients are prescribed the right medicines, at the right time, in the right doses. The National Health Service is responding to the challenge of overprescribing and driving changes in this area by:

• Implementing the National Medicines Optimisation Opportunities for ICBs, more information can be found at the following link: https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/national-medicines-optimisation-opportunities-2023-24/
• Addressing problematic polypharmacy
• Delivering Structured Medication Reviews, more information can be found at the following link: https://www.england.nhs.uk/primary-care/pharmacy/smr/
• Improving repeat prescribing processes
• Optimising personalised care for adults prescribed medicines associated with dependence or withdrawal symptoms, more information can be found at the following link: https://www.england.nhs.uk/publication/optimising-personalised-care-for-adults-prescribed-medicines-associated-with-dependence-or-withdrawal-symptoms/

Offering treatments that are not medicines is also key to addressing overprescribing. Many other initiatives delivered across the NHS contribute towards this. These include delivery of personalised care and shared decision-making, NHS Talking Therapies for anxiety and depression, and social prescribing.