Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an estimate of the number of vacancies there are for (a) nurses and (b) pharmacists in homecare medicines services as of 1 December 2022; and if he will make an assessment of the potential impact of the number of vacancies on (i) the performance of homecare medicines services and (ii) patient safety.

In England there are 12 providers of homecare medicines and services. NHS England (NHSE) have advised they do not collect data on the number of vacancies for nurses and pharmacists in homecare medicines services.

Homecare providers are assessed on a monthly basis against their Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) at a national level for NHSE framework agreements and at a regional level for NHS regional contracting and more formally on a regular basis through face-to-face meetings with the National Homecare Medicines Committee and NHSE. The level of vacancies do not form part of this quality assurance and governance process, so estimates cannot reasonably be made. The quality assurance and governance process covers the monitoring of patients’ adverse events, complaints and incidents. Providers not meeting their KPIs in these areas are held to account and action is taken to ensure that levels of service are brought back in line with the relevant professional standards, these resolutions impact directly on service performance and patient safety.