Asked by: Kevin Barron (Labour - Rother Valley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the current balance of the pharmacy integration fund is; and what initiatives have been supported by that fund since its inception.
Answered by Seema Kennedy
NHS England and NHS Improvement are awaiting the completion of the annual audit of its accounts, therefore no final figure is currently available for the balance of the Pharmacy Integration Fund (PhIF). The PhIF has supported a range of initiatives, including:
- Recruitment and training of pharmacists to support integrated urgent care services, offering patients and care staff direct access to clinical advice and care from pharmacists;
- Putting pharmacists and pharmacy technicians into the multi-disciplinary teams delivering enhanced health in care homes, to support medicines optimisation for people who live in care homes;
- The development of an urgent medicines supply service. This connects people who contact NHS 111 for urgent access to medicines with local community pharmacies who are able to dispense, and redirects demand out of general practitioner out of hours services, and/or accident and emergency departments;
- The piloting of a minor illness service, which enables people who contact NHS 111 to get urgent care and advice from a local community pharmacy for a range of common illness complaints; and
- Providing leadership training for the profession to support them to work effectively with their partners in the emerging integrated care systems, with a focus on delivering the range of benefits of medicines optimisation.
Further information can be found on NHS England’s website and accessed via the following link:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/primary-care/pharmacy/pharmacy-integration-fund/
Asked by: Kevin Barron (Labour - Rother Valley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate his Department has made of the average number of hours general practitioners spend on writing NHS prescriptions in England per week.
Answered by Seema Kennedy
The data requested is not collected or held centrally.
Asked by: Kevin Barron (Labour - Rother Valley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much was spent on delivering the NHS England Stay Well Pharmacy campaign; and over what time period those funds were spent.
Answered by Seema Kennedy
The most recent NHS England ‘Pharmacy Advice’ campaign - previously called the Stay Well Pharmacy campaign - ran between 4 February and 17 March 2019. We are informed by NHS England that the overall cost of running the advertising campaign was £2 million.
Asked by: Kevin Barron (Labour - Rother Valley)
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 (a) the implementation costs and (b) potential benefits of community pharmacists having write access to NHS patient records.
Answered by Seema Kennedy
The Department has made no assessment of the implementation costs of providing write access to patient records. However, in future, our ambition is for pharmacists to play an even greater role within the National Health Service and we understand that write access to NHS patient records will support this.
Providing read and write access to general practitioner (GP) records for pharmacists is complex. In some areas medical records are already shared between professionals to support locally commissioned services. To develop a national solution Departmental officials, NHS England and NHS Digital have considered important issues such as technical requirements, data standards, patient consent and data security to provide write access. Work is progressing and during 2019 pilots will commence to test that digital transfer can successfully take place between community pharmacy and GP IT systems.
Asked by: Kevin Barron (Labour - Rother Valley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what funding his Department has allocated to (a) the Community Pharmacy Referral Scheme and (b) the Digital Illness Referral Service in each fiscal year since the programmes have been in operation.
Answered by Seema Kennedy
In December 2016, a new referral scheme to community pharmacy was initiated from NHS 111 to community pharmacy in response to urgent requests for medication. This has been running as a pilot with national coverage achieved by June 2017 with over 4,000 pharmacies now registered to deliver the service. This pilot is named as the NHS Urgent Medicines Supply Advanced Service (NUMSAS) within the community pharmacy contractual framework running until October 2019.
From December 2017, a further scheme started in the North East enabling the referral of patients from NHS 111 to community pharmacy for a community pharmacist consultation about minor illness symptoms. This pilot known as the Digital Minor Illness Referral Service (DMIRS) was extended to Devon, London and the East Midlands from December 2018 and is continuing until October 2019. Over 2,000 pharmacies are registered to deliver the minor illness service.
Both schemes are funded by the Pharmacy Integration Fund with the audited spend provided by NHS England as follows:
| NUMSAS | DMIRS |
2016/17 | £9,600 | - |
2017/18 | £1,190,401 | £250,000 |
The audited spend for 2018/19 is not yet available.