INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY MEDICINES MANAGEMENT


for their drug budgets and the pressure will be on to generate the massive savings it is believed can be made from good medicines management.


However careful some GPs and GP practices are in their prescribing, there are certain areas where prescribing is notoriously difficult to control. GP locums and GP registrars can distort practice prescribing however careful the practice’s partners may be. The recent introduction of a web-based support solutions for prescribing healthcare professionals within the primary care sector has been a welcome one for many practices, as it provides prescribing decision support that improves patient care and potentially delivers cost savings. One leading brand alone is now installed in more than 6,500 GP practices, across 138 NHS primary care trusts and NHS health boards throughout the UK.


“As CCGs become established in 2013, GP practices will need to be more responsible for their drug budgets and the pressure will be on to generate the massive savings it is believed can be made from good medicines management”


GP training practices and those practices that traditionally use a large number of GP locums have found this kind of support solution invaluable as it not only delivers recommendations for existing patient medications, but it also supports decision- making when initiating new treatments during a patient consultation. In addition, it assists GP locums and GP registrars stay in line with practice/CCG formularies. Web script support services often partner with drug knowledge bases, as well as many of the leading primary care software providers. In addition to the software support, one of the most effective and efficient ways to improve prescribing in practices in recent years has come about as a result of the introduction of prescribing support pharmacists. Via recommendations from pharmacists, many practices have changed their prescribing profiles significantly to optimise their drugs budgets by allowing


PCT/CCGs to define drug switch opportunities. PCT/CCGs have been able to increase the number of hours done by prescribing support pharmacists in certain practices, to ensure that the GP practice consortia have good medicines management in all their GP practices, generating savings for all, not just a few, and thus increasing the savings made by the consortia as a whole.


A combination of software and prescribing support pharmacists continues to assist both GP practices and CCGs as they strive to generate more savings, however, as diabetes increases in the UK over the coming years so the pressure to make savings will increase. In England, 2.5 million people have been diagnosed with diabetes and the number is expected to reach 4.2 million by 2025. The growth in diabetes drug prescription numbers is faster and greater than for prescriptions overall, where items have increased by 33%. The net cost in diabetes drugs, including treatments for type-one and type-two diabetes, also rose by just under 50% in the six years between 2005-06 and 2011-12. Any savings made in medicines management may well have to be redirected towards the existing NHS Health Check, which everyone between the ages of 40 and 75 should be getting. To date, this has seemed poorly implemented but improving this service is the only way that the NHS will be able to end the steep rise in the number of people with diabetes, so beginning to bring the spiralling financial cost of the condition under control. As Young says: “We need to grasp the nettle on preventing type-two diabetes, which accounts for around 90% of diabetes cases. We need a government-funded awareness raising campaign on the risk factors and symptoms of type-two diabetes and we need to get much better at identifying people at high risk so they can be given the support they need to prevent the condition.” Diabetes awareness campaigns need to go hand in hand with good medicines management. Until this happens, the increase in spending on diabetes-related medicines is inevitable as such medicines are vital to reduce the risk of complications caused by diabetes, such as blindness, amputation, kidney failure and stroke.


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