Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps she is taking to tackle the number of hospital admissions due to incorrect medication prescriptions.

Clinicians are responsible for making prescription decisions for their patients, and are accountable for these decisions, both professionally and to their service commissioners. It is for the general practitioner (GP) or other responsible clinician to work with their patient and decide on the course of treatment, with the provision that the most clinically appropriate care for the individual is always the primary consideration.

The National Medicines Optimisation Opportunities for the National Health Service includes resources to support medicines optimisation implementation for multiple areas. Of these opportunities, those which support tackling overprescribing include: addressing problematic polypharmacy, addressing inappropriate antidepressant prescribing, addressing low priority prescribing, reducing course length of antimicrobial prescribing and reducing opioid use in chronic non-cancer pain.

The Quality and Outcomes Framework for GPs includes modules designed to support GPs with the best prescription practices, as well as medication safety. The overarching aim is to lead to improvements in:

- use of non-pharmacological alternatives in line with best evidence and guidance;

- structured medication reviews of patients taking 120 milligrams of oral morphine equivalent or more for chronic pain; and

- structured medication reviews where there is polypharmacy or inappropriate use of dependence forming medications.