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Prescribing |
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 The NHS spends £22 million per day on prescription drugs prescribed in primary care. Our aim is to spend our proportion of this resource wisely and to provide
an efficient and high quality service.We prescribe according to a formulary agreed with our local hospitals and Primary Care Trust (PCT). In line with national policy we use generic drug names (a small number of drugs must be prescribed by their brand name). There are a significant number of drugs which The Dorset Prescribing Forum has stated should not be prescribed from general practice (red drugs); others should only be prescribed from General Practice after stabilisation under hospital care (amber drugs). We are required by our PCT to keep within budget whilst maintaining quality prescribing. Our budget for 2007/8 is £2,312,439. We prescribe a lot of very expensive drugs but we simply do not have the resources to prescribe expensive drugs when there are cheaper ones that work equally well. You are now able to apply for a prescription Pre-payment certificate online. Westbourne Medical Centre, ‘The best of the best’-again!Last year it was in the area of the care of diabetic patients that Westbourne Medical Centre was being given such an honour. This year the accolade may be the same but the topic is the high quality of medicine prescribing. Recently the well-known body the Audit Commission reviewed prescribing across the whole of England and in their report they give the Poole area high praise for the quality of their prescribing. All the practices in Poole have had their pattern of prescribing for patients examined by the Poole Primary Care Trust prescribing adviser, Dr Judy Gordon. This year her comments for Westbourne Medical Centre were uniformly positive and she commented that our prescribing could be an example to other local practices. Prescribing is one on the most important ways we seek to serve our patients and we will seek to continue to excel at it. One way we do this is to fund the subscription for all the doctors to one of the only independent sources of advice on prescription medicines which is produced by the publishers of ‘Which’ magazine, the consumers Association. We believe this helps us to bring the most appropriate care to our patients without being unduly influenced by the aggressive advertising of large pharmaceutical companies. Tip for patients:
Drug companies do all they can to increase ‘consumer demand’ for their products. Sometimes these drugs have little particularly unique about them except the companies wishes to maximise their profit from the sale of it. Approaches they use to target potential patient users include funding ‘Educational’ bodies and by issuing press releases with supporting information that results in articles or features appear in the media that are little more than uncritical regurgitation of the drug company promotional material.
A degree of healthy scepticism about media ‘New drug’ claims are probably a good idea for all of us! Long Term Prescriptions
Avoiding Mistakes
The electronic prescription serviceMany of you will have noticed that prescriptions look different. This is to accommodate a new prescription service which will eventually permit The Medical Centre to send your prescription electronically to a pharmacy of your choice. At that stage you will not have to collect a paper prescription from us. You will merely need to pick up your drugs from the pharmacy. If you would like further information please see EPS leaflet.pdf Links to useful information on medicines |
