Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Independent)
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To ask the Minister for Health further to Parliamentary Question No. 701 of 27 November 2012, if he will provide an update on the prescribing trend in respect of Benzodiazepines and the outcome of the Primary Care Reimbursement Service project to monitor the prescribing patterns of Benzodiazepines; and if the prescribing patterns of psychiatric services and other institutions are now included in this project. [4376/13]

Alex White (Dublin South, Labour)
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The HSE has developed and made available on-line to GPs for some time, an individualized prescribing report whereby the individual GP can access their personal prescribing of Benzodiazepines on a monthly basis and also benchmark their own prescribing against their peers. This is standardised for gender and age of the GP's panel. One hundred percent of GPs have access to the website and the majority are active users.

 To further assist GPs, a snapshot of Benzodiazepine/'Z'  claims presented in community pharmacies for the month of November 2011 was generated in January 2012 and provided to each GMS doctor at the end of January 2012. Three pieces of information were provided in the letter to all GMS GPs:

1. the prescribing frequency standardised for gender/panel profile of benzodiazepines and ‘Z’ medicines;                  

2. the number of patients who were presenting prescriptions for periods more than three, six and12 months; and

3. a pictorial representation of their individual prescribing against the national profile.

This exercise was repeated during the year. It is important that sufficient time is given between such reports to enable the GP to reflect and consider adjustment of practice where appropriate. Individual GPs have generally been very supportive of the initiative to date. In line with the policy to standardise the arrangements under the State drug schemes and ensure that GPs have a full involvement in their patients medications as whole, including their psychiatric drugs, clients who hold a medical card, in the former Eastern Regional Health Authority area, now attend their GP to get their outpatient prescription from psychiatric services written on a GMS prescription form. This enables a more complete overview to be conducted prospectively but has complicated the trend analysis for 2011/2012. Hospital in-patient prescribing is not captured by the information available through the Primary Care Reimbursement Service.