Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to increase access to medicines for patients receiving (a) palliative and (b) end of life care.
Local integrated care boards (ICBs) can commission out-of-hours dispensing locally if there is a need for patients to access medicines outside of the core pharmacy hours, including as part of any palliative and end of life arrangements that the ICB is required to make under statutory guidance.
Adults in the last days of life who are likely to need symptom control should be prescribed anticipatory medicines with written instructions for how to use or administer treatment. The medicines are prescribed in advance so that they can be obtained during local pharmacy opening hours and kept safely at home, or at a care home, so that the person or their carer has access to them if they develop symptoms. The use of anticipatory prescribing is a quality standard in the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence’s guideline, Care of dying adults in the last days of life.