Standard adult ready-to-drink oral nutritional supplements: ACBS policy
Applies to England
Read the full outcome
Detail of outcome
The consultation proposed a change to adult oral nutritional supplement volume size, and most people agreed it would improve prescribing and reduce errors.
However, the Advisory Committee on Borderline Substances (ACBS) is not recommending action on volume size at this time because responses raised several other important concerns that need to be explored first.
Patient safety incidents were reported and ACBS is proposing an audit to determine the scale and nature of incidents. NHS England and the Optimising Nutrition Prescribing Specialist Group of the British Dietetic Association have agreed to undertake this work and report the outcomes.
Following this, ACBS and others will commence dialogue with industry about any problems identified and reported with packaging, labelling and product names. ACBS will then decide whether to advise on changes.
Separately, ACBS will work with stakeholders to improve communication of prescribing practice. Work by the NHS Business Services Authority to categorise nutritional borderline substances has laid the foundation to replicate this in the British National Formulary and ensure consistency across the system.
Original consultation
Consultation description
The proposed changes cover:
- the standardising of pack sizes to 125ml and 200ml
- the listing of no more than one volume of each product
- the recommending of 1kcal/ml ONS for certain clinical conditions only
- criteria for standard adult ready-to-drink oral nutritional supplements prescribed for use once per day
- the use of ‘complete’ and ‘fibre’ in brand names and when describing products
Documents
Updates to this page
Last updated 22 August 2024 + show all updates
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Added consultation response.
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Updated the scope of the consultation to standard adult ready-to-drink oral nutritional supplements, to allow representations to also be made via post and/or email and to extend the closing date until 11:45pm on Sunday 1 August.
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First published.