Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he has made an assessment of the impact of trends in the level of homecare medicines services on patient safety.

Providers of Homecare Medicines services operate in a highly regulated environment with obligations to record and monitor quality metrics, including any trends. To monitor industry trends, providers provide the same data set to the trade association, the National Clinical Homecare Association (NCHA), allowing for the aggregation of all providers metrics. The NCHA report that delivery performance of providers (delivery to patients on the agreed date) was 99.0% in 2020; 98.6% in 2021; and 98.8% in 2022. Formal complaints and incidents are also monitored and the data shows that the percentage of complaints raised was 1.4% in 2020; 1.6% in 2021 and 1.8% in 2022 of active patients (this refers to complaints opened, not upheld).

The National Homecare Medicines Committee (NHMC) is not aware of having received any formal written notifications from manufacturers where declining trends can be reasonably considered to compromise patient safety. Information from clinical referring centres is routed via regional National Health Service homecare specialists, as NHMC members.

When the Key Performance Indicators indicate that the service levels of a provider on a national or regional framework or contract are not to the standard expected, the NHMC addresses the issue by meeting with individual providers to discuss safety and performance issues. If necessary, the regulators the Care Quality Commission and the General Pharmaceutical Council are also informed.