Lord Hunt of Kings Heath – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Hunt of Kings Heath on 2016-03-01.
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Prior of Brampton on 4 January (HL4800), what evidence they have that suggests that the complexity of choice in wound dressings for nurses and clinicians makes their clinical decisions more difficult and can lead to over-specification and variation in standards of care.
Lord Prior of Brampton
The NHS Catalogue contained over 600,000 products, many of which had been not used in excess of the last 12 months or were seemingly duplicate items. Given the sheer volume of products, this creates the complexity faced by clinicians and nurses when determining the appropriate products to use, which directly makes their decisions more difficult.
By undertaking the planned clinical rationalisation of the products available via NHS Supply Chain, the Department aims to reduce this complexity, removing unnecessary products, ensuring that those available to the National Health Service are of an appropriate specification in order to maintain high standards of patient care.
The clinical rationalisation work is being undertaken by practising clinicians taking into account feedback from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence and other relevant programmes, such as ‘ Getting it Right First Time’.
