Short-term repeats are not
justified to curb medicine waste
By
Katherine White
Monday, 18. April 2011 revised
The ADSHG, with the support
of its clinical advisory panel, has been attempting to
raise medical awareness of the risks to patient safety
from short-term repeats (28-day repeat prescribing) for
people with Addison's for several years and has published
an article showing that short-term repeats are not cost
effective for patients on stable, long-term therapies such
as steroid replacement treatment.
|
|
|
Now, a new independent report commissioned by the Department
of Health has found that avoidable medicines waste in
England has a likely value of less than £150 million a year,
or less than 1.9% of English spending on primary and
community care medicines. Importantly, this report found
that one of the main measures that PCTs have adopted for
controlling waste - 28-day repeat prescribing - is
ineffective when applied indiscriminately to patients with
long-term conditions. It concluded that in certain
circumstances, limiting prescriptions to 28-days serves as a
cause of inconvenience to medicine takers - contributing to
poor therapeutic compliance in cases - and acts to drive up
supply side costs.
To read the ADSHG's Rapid
Response to the Waste Medicine report,
click here...
To read the ADSHG's Rapid
Response on the cost implications of 28-day repeat
prescriptions
click here...
To
read the full report on Evaluation of the Scale, Causes and
Costs of Waste Medicine,
click here...
To read the Department of Health's response to the Waste
Medicine report,
click here...
The Waste Medicine report's finding that 28-day repeat
prescribing drives up supply side costs reinforces the
point made by the ADSHG's recent article on medicines
wastage, which found that pharmacy dispensing costs now
make up around one-third of the cost of most
prescription items, which are dispensed as generics with
an average net ingredient cost of £3.83. The ADSHG's
review concluded that if all 842.5 million prescription
items issued by the NHS in England in 2008 had been
28-day repeat-dispensing items, it would have added a
projected £700 million to the actual pharmacy costs of
around £1.5 billion.
In June 2010, the International Journal of Pharmacy
Practice published the ADSHG's article "UK interventions
to control medicines wastage: a critical review".
Read the abstract on their
website here...
This follows from our earlier published letters and
public submissions, which have been:
- A
letter to the British Medical Journal in 2007, which you
can find at
(Rapid Response to: BMJ BMJ 2007; 334: 1076-a).
-
Submissions to the Gilmore Review of prescription charges
pointing out that 28-day repeats imposed unnecessary
pharmacy charges as well as meaning that steroid-dependent
patients were at greater risk of running out of their
essential medications. You can read these submissions
on our website here..
The deadly risks of running out
of steroid medication
The ADSHG wishes to
acknowledge the untimely death of Justin Watkis, who
collapsed and died in March 2009, between three and five
days after running out of his essential steroid
medication. He was 33 years old and had been diagnosed
with Addison's less than a year earlier. We offer our
sincere condolences to Justin's family and thank them
for allowing his story to be publicised. To read about
Justin's sudden death,
click
here...
|
About us
ADSHG
Website Alert