DHSC have issued a reminder to companies on how to report a medical supply disruption. Please see the guidance below:
As many of you will be aware, the National Supply Disruption Response (NSDR) is the single point of contact for the UK’s health and care system, and medical supply industry, in the event of medical supply disruption that may require national support to help mitigate the impact on patients and/or service delivery
If you are experiencing, or anticipating, a medical product supply issue that may require NSDR support or national awareness, I would encourage you to approach the NSDR as early as possible. The NSDR call centre can be reached between 9am-5pm, Monday to Friday (except on Bank Holidays) on 0800 915 9964 in the UK or +44 02079721071 from outside the UK. All information submitted to the NSDR is treated as commercially sensitive and will not be shared outside of the Department without your agreement.
Once reported our dedicated team will work closely with you and system partners to help mitigate any impact to patients and/or service provision. Established mitigations include supporting mutual aid; identifying alternative products and substitutes; as well as working closely with regulators and other Government Departments as appropriate.
The NSDR also includes the Express Freight Service (EFS), a 24/7 service which provides bespoke, global logistics solutions in the event of critical disruption. If you would like to register your company for access to the EFS at any point in the future, please email the NSDR Office at SPOC.NSDR@dhsc.gov.uk for details and support. Registration is free and will enable faster access should you required to use the service in the future.
It is vital that we maximise the time available to support you to manage disruption and mitigate patient impact. To this end, we ask that, if you plan to discontinue a product from any part of the UK market you inform us via medtechdiscontinuations@dhsc.gov.uk. We are also exploring options to better enable earlier, voluntary, reporting of broader supply disruption by industry to the NSDR and will share further information in Spring.
Please note that medicine suppliers have a statutory duty to provide early notification of supply disruption to the Department. They should contact the medicines supply team at medicinescontingencyplanning@dhsc.gov.uk and dash@dhsc.gov.uk.
Key contacts
You can find further information on the NSDR, including the Express Freight Service on our gov.uk page.
To help ensure you have access to the latest guidance, documents, and webinars relevant to medical supply chains from across Government, we have a dedicated DHSC Supply Resilience online platform.
To join, please contact supply.engagement@dhsc.gov.uk.
