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 adequacy of access to shared care arrangements for adults diagnosed with ADHD.

We are supporting a cross-sector taskforce that NHS England has established to look at attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) service provision and support across sectors, and their impact on patient experience. The taskforce is bringing together expertise from across a broad range of sectors, including the National Health Service, education and justice, to better understand the challenges affecting people with ADHD including timely access to services and support.

General practitioners (GPs) are independent contractors that provide services for the National Health Service. The General Medical Council has published guidance on “Good practice in proposing, prescribing, providing and managing medicines and devices content”. This includes guidance on shared care arrangements between a specialist service and the patient’s GP to help GPs decide whether to accept shared care responsibilities for any condition. The guidance is available at the following link:

https://www.gmc-uk.org/professional-standards/the-professional-standards/good-practice-in-prescribing-and-managing-medicines-and-devices/shared-care

NHS clinicians need to be content that any prescriptions, or referrals for treatment, are clinically appropriate. All shared care arrangements are voluntary, so even where agreements are in place, practices can decline shared care requests on clinical and capacity grounds.

If a shared care arrangement cannot be put in place after the treatment has been initiated, the responsibility for continued prescribing falls upon the specialist clinician; this applies to both NHS and private medical care.