NHS England issues advice ahead of early release of prisoners
NHS England has written to Integrated Care Boards today, providing advice relevant to community pharmacies and general practices ahead of the early release of people from prisons later this month and in October.
This follows the Lord Chancellor taking action to avert a prison capacity crisis by introducing a process for lowering Standard Determinate Sentences from 50% to 40% (SDS40). This process will see around 5,500 people being released early from prison, with the first tranche being released on 10th September 2024 and a second tranche on 22nd October 2024.
Over the last few weeks, NHS health and justice service commissioners and providers of prison healthcare have been working closely with His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service and other NHS organisations and councils to support the safe release of individuals.
Implications for Drug treatment services
This process may have implications for drug and alcohol treatment and recovery service providers, many of whom may have new clients to support. This will mean some community pharmacies will similarly be asked to support the dispensing of opioid substitution therapy (OST) for people released from prison.
Local councils and drug and alcohol treatment service providers have discussed this with many LPCs over the last few weeks, so your LPC may be able to provide further information on the local situation.
Guidance for pharmacy teams
From a pharmacy perspective, the NHS England letter flags the potential for the Pharmacy First service and Pharmacy Contraception Service to be used to support people released from prison, e.g. people accessing an urgent supply of a repeat medicine following a referral to the Pharmacy First service from NHS 111.
It also confirms that people being released from prison will normally be given 28 days of medicines at discharge.
Special arrangements will apply for OST prescribing with prison medical services providing a prescription (FP10/FP10MDA) for up to 14 days or a short-term interim supply of medicine as per local arrangements.
As we highlighted last month, the electronic prescription service (EPS) is starting to be rolled out into the prison healthcare system, so over the next year, pharmacy teams may start to see electronic prescriptions issued by healthcare services in prisons.
Free-of-charge status for HM prison-issued prescriptions
An HM prison-issued FP10 or FP10MDA prescription which is issued to a person who has been released from prison is exempt from NHS prescription charges.
The prescriber address on the prescription is used to confirm that the prescription is exempt from charges; the prescription must have ‘HMP’ stated in the practice address. In these instances, the patient does not need to complete a signed declaration on the back of the form. EPS exemption category 0015 is used for processing HMP prisoners on release.
Note: some PMR supplier systems may label exemption category 0015 in an unclear way, such as ‘patient does not have to pay a prescription charge’. Exemption category 0015 should be used exclusively for processing HMP prescriptions for people released from the prison.
