AQW 14600/22-27

Miss Nuala McAllister
Alliance Party
North Belfast

Tabled Date: 06/09/2024
Answered On Date: 20/09/2024
Priority Written: No

Question:
To ask the Minister of Health for an update on work to amend the Pharmaceutical Services Regulations (Northern Ireland) 1997 and the Health and Personal Social Services (General Medical Services Contracts) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2004 to enable dietitians to have supplementary prescribing rights in a primary care setting.

Answer:

Following amendments made in 2016 to the UK-wide Human Medicines Regulations 2012, additional amendments were made to both the Health and Personal Social Services (General Medical Services Contracts) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2004 and the Health and Personal Social Services Pharmaceutical Services Regulations (NI) 1997 in order to add dietitian supplementary prescribers to those who are able to prescribe under the workings of a General Medical Services Contract and make provision for a community pharmacist to dispense against a HS21 prescription that is written by a dietitian supplementary prescriber.

The Pharmaceutical Services (Amendment) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2022 were laid on 8 February 2022 and came into operation from 1 March 2022 and the Health and Personal Social Services (General Medical Services Contracts) (Amendment) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2022 were laid on 24 March 2022 and came into operation on 14 April 2022.

However, at present there are no models of supplementary prescribing by dietitians in Primary care being delivered in Northern Ireland. A new models of prescribing pilot delivered back in 2021 enabled supplementary prescribing annotated dietitians to provide oral nutritional supplements in care homes and work is ongoing regionally to look at how this can model be progressed. There are also annotated dietitians working in Acute hospital settings across Northern Ireland who are able to practice supplementary prescribing.

Physiotherapy, Podiatry and Paramedics are practicing as non-medical prescribers in primary care settings and there are tight governance arrangements in place for these services. These governance arrangements will be mirrored for any new Allied Health Professional service practicing as independent or supplementary prescribers. All staff delivering either supplementary or independent prescribing must have completed the appropriate post graduate training and must be annotated on the Health and Care Professions Council register accordingly.