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 reduce the number of deaths which are primarily caused by excess of prescription drugs.
A number of measures are in place to reduce death and harm from unnecessary medicines. Healthcare professionals are advised to take an approach known as medicines optimisation to their prescribing practice. Medicines optimisation focuses on patients and their experiences: the goal is to help patients to improve their outcomes, take their medicines as intended, avoid taking unnecessary medicines, reduce wastage of medicines and improve medicines safety. Medicines optimisation is a key workstream within NHS England’s Medicines Value Programme, which aims to improve outcomes, quality and value from the investment made in medicines.