NHS action plan launched March 2023
06 March 2023
A new action plan launched by NHS England will tackle inappropriate prescribing of potentially addictive medicines, including high-strength painkillers, such as opioids, and benzodiazepines.
The plan will help local health and care providers to create personalised and innovative support for patients to better manage their long-term physical and mental health. This may include using shared decision making to support people with alternatives such as social prescribing interventions to prescribed medicines, where the clinical benefit of remaining on a treatment decreases.
Professor Tony Avery OBE, National Clinical Director for Prescribing at NHS England, said: “Medicines offer a fantastic range of tools for NHS staff to provide patient care and treatment that can be positively life-changing, or even life-saving.
“However, we need to be alert to the risks of some medicines, particularly when used over a long period of time, and the framework empowers local services to work with people to ensure they are being effectively supported when a medicine is no longer providing overall benefit”.
Find out more
Read the framework document