§ Mr. MorleyTo ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) what steps he has taken to check prescriptions taken to dispensing chemists on behalf of elderly residents in private nursing homes are not misused;
(2) what steps have been taken to ensure surplus prescribed drugs in private nursing homes are not stockpiled for unauthorised use.
§ Mrs. Virginia Bottomley[pursuant to her reply, 9 February 1990, c. 806]: I regret that I implied that all private nursing homes employed pharmacists. I wish to make the following clarification.
232WNotes:
1. Hospital and Community Health Services (HCHS) covers total expenditure including that on hospital, community health and other services.
2. The authority's capital expenditure and all expenditure incurred by the Yorkshire Regional Health Authority on behalf of the region as a whole is excluded. Expenditure on family practitioner services, which is accounted for by family practitioner committees and cannot strictly be attributed to particular regions or districts, is also excluded.
3. The population figures used make no allowance for people resident in one district who receive treatment in another or for differences in morbidity and age/sex structure of particular populations.
4. Prior to 1 April 1982 the authority's predecessor health district formed part of a larger area health authority and in those cases district based figures were not collected centrally.