A serious shortage protocol is an additional tool to manage and mitigate medication shortages and may be used in the exceptional and rare situation when other measures have been exhausted or are likely to be ineffective. Any protocol would only be introduced if clinicians with expertise in the relevant area think it is appropriate. Pharmacists still have to use their professional discretion as to whether supplying against the protocol rather than the prescription is appropriate, or whether the patient needs to be referred back to their prescriber.<\/p>
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As the explanatory memorandum of the amending Statutory Instrument acknowledges, protocols for therapeutic or generic equivalents will not be suitable for all medicines and patients. For example, those types of protocols would not be suitable for treatments for epilepsy or treatments requiring biological products where the medicines that are prescribed need to be prescribed by brand for clinical reasons. In these cases, patients would always be referred back to the prescriber for any decision about their treatment before any therapeutic or generic alternative is supplied.<\/p>"} , "answeringMember" : {"_about" : "http://data.parliament.uk/members/4455", "label" : {"_value" : "Biography information for Seema Kennedy"} } , "answeringMemberConstituency" : {"_value" : "South Ribble"} , "answeringMemberPrinted" : {"_value" : "Seema Kennedy"} , "dateOfAnswer" : {"_value" : "2019-04-08", "_datatype" : "dateTime"} , "isMinisterialCorrection" : {"_value" : "false", "_datatype" : "boolean"} , "questionFirstAnswered" : [{"_value" : "2019-04-08T15:24:32.637Z", "_datatype" : "dateTime"} ]} , "answeringDeptId" : {"_value" : "17"} , "answeringDeptShortName" : {"_value" : "Health and Social Care"} , "answeringDeptSortName" : {"_value" : "Health and Social Care"} , "date" : {"_value" : "2019-04-03", "_datatype" : "dateTime"} , "hansardHeading" : {"_value" : "NHS: Drugs"} , "houseId" : {"_value" : "1"} , "legislature" : [{"_about" : "http://data.parliament.uk/terms/25259", "prefLabel" : {"_value" : "House of Commons"} } ], "questionText" : "To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he has taken to ensure that the serious shortage protocols safeguard individuals who suffer from a condition, such as epilepsy, in which any change in medication could pose a serious risk to their health.", "registeredInterest" : {"_value" : "false", "_datatype" : "boolean"} , "tablingMember" : {"_about" : "http://data.parliament.uk/members/4390", "label" : {"_value" : "Biography information for Ian Blackford"} } , "tablingMemberConstituency" : {"_value" : "Ross, Skye and Lochaber"} , "tablingMemberPrinted" : [{"_value" : "Ian Blackford"} ], "uin" : "240571"} ], "itemsPerPage" : 10, "page" : 0, "startIndex" : 1, "totalResults" : 1, "type" : ["http://purl.org/linked-data/api/vocab#ListEndpoint", "http://purl.org/linked-data/api/vocab#Page"]} }