Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have to ask NHS England to undertake a review into the safety and reliability of homecare medicines services in England.

The National Homecare Medicines Committee (NHMC), managed by and including representation from NHS England, and the National Clinical Homecare Association (NCHA) have met with the British Society for Rheumatology (BSR) to discuss their concerns about the safety and reliability of homecare medicines services, including delays in treatment. The NCHA have proposed to BSR that they will repurpose their bi-annual NCHA All Members Meeting to commence the wider discussion on the main areas of concern identified. The NCHA have reported that they intend to seek a broad base of stakeholder engagement at this event which will include NCHA full and associate members, the Association of British Pharmaceutical Industry, NHMC members and BSR.

This represents a high degree of commitment from the NCHA and NHMC to work actively with the BSR and other stakeholders to resolve the concerns and issues which have been raised. The BSR has written to the Department requesting a meeting and the Department will be responding to the BSR shortly.

NHMC’s standardisation programme includes an NHS Digital strategy project. Within the NHMC there is a digital sub-group working closely with NHS Digital on the output-based specification for e-prescribing for homecare medicines services to use an Electronic Prescribing System. This work is at an advanced stage in preparation for consultation with NHMC during 2023.

NHS England’s Commercial Medicines Unit, which manages four national framework agreements for the provision of homecare medicines services for Home Parenteral Nutrition, Lysosomal Storage Disorders, Pulmonary Hypertension and Clotting Factors, holds regular engagement meetings with providers on the framework and when appropriate will discuss recruitment and retention of staff. NHMC also holds discussions regarding recruitment, retention and vacancies during engagement meetings with providers when appropriate to do so.