Asked by: Oliver Colvile (Conservative - Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to reduce medicine waste.
Answered by David Mowat
Information is not held centrally on the annual cost or amount of dispensed but unused prescription drugs in the National Health Service.
The Department commissioned the York Health Economics Consortium and the School of Pharmacy at the University of London to carry out research to determine the scale, causes and costs of waste medicines in England. The report, Evaluation of the Scale, Causes and Costs of Waste Medicines, was published on 23 November 2010. This found that the gross cost of unused prescription medicines in primary and community care in the NHS in England in 2009 was £300 million a year and that up to £150 million of this was avoidable. The report is available at:
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/111804.pdf?repositoryId=90
NHS England is working with the Department and the NHS Business Services Authority to consider how value can best be obtained from the use of medicines, both in terms of patient outcomes and financial implications. This work, along with the medicines optimisation programme, will help ensure best value for both taxpayers and patients.
Asked by: Oliver Colvile (Conservative - Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what his Department is doing to narrow the 12 year difference in life expectancy between council wards in Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport constituency.
Answered by Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
Addressing health inequalities is a Government priority. This was clearly set out in the Prime Minister’s inaugural speech in July. Key to this message was the importance of addressing the gap in life expectancy.
Achieving measurable and sustained reductions in health inequalities by 2020 and reducing the gaps in life expectancy and healthy life expectancy are priority objectives in the Department’s Shared Delivery Plan: 2015 – 2020. Action is largely led locally to ensure that the solutions put in place reflect the needs of individual communities.
To address the differences in life expectancy across Plymouth, Plymouth Clinical Commissioning Group and health services have introduced the ‘Thrive’ initiative. This aims to tackle the four lifestyle choices (inactivity, diet, alcohol consumption and smoking) that lead to respiratory diseases, cancer, stroke and heart disease. The work, currently in its second year, is the start of the long term drive to improve health and reduce inequalities in Plymouth. Health organisations such as Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust, Livewell Southwest and general practitioner Practices have signed up in support of the Thrive initiative.
In order to ensure that health services are supporting those communities with the highest need, the ‘Success Regime’ has been introduced across Devon, which aims to protect and promote services for patients in local health and care systems that are struggling with financial or quality problems. Additionally, the Sustainability and Transformation Plan for Wider Devon includes a requirement to ensure that sustainable general practice is in place for all populations with equitable access times for routine and urgent treatment.
Asked by: Oliver Colvile (Conservative - Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps the Government is taking to increase the number of non-medical prescribing nurses.
Answered by Philip Dunne
The Department and NHS England have successfully extended prescribing responsibilities to a wider group of health professions, including nurses. This is helping the National Health Service to deliver more timely and effective patient care. These professionals are termed ‘non-medical prescribers’, in order to distinguish them from doctors and dentists.
There are two types of non-medical prescriber:
― Independent Prescribers are able to complete whole episodes of care for a patient, taking responsibility from consultation through to diagnosis and finally, if appropriate, prescription.
― Supplementary Prescribers work in conjunction with a doctor to provide patient care. Supplementary Prescribing is a voluntary partnership between an independent prescriber (in this case a doctor) and a supplementary prescriber, to implement a patient-specific clinical management plan, with the patient’s agreement.
To become a non-medical prescriber, nurses must undertake a recognised Nursing and Midwifery Council accredited prescribing course through a United Kingdom university, sponsored by their employer on the basis of service need.
Local NHS organisations with their knowledge of the healthcare needs of their local population are therefore responsible for investing in training for nurses’ prescribing roles to deliver the best patient care and meet the changing needs of patients and services.
Asked by: Oliver Colvile (Conservative - Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many non-medical prescribing nurses there are at level (a) PL1, (b) PL2, (c) PL3 and (d) PL4.
Answered by Philip Dunne
This information is not collected by the Department.