GPs Wasting Millions on Drugs Comment

As a practising pharmacist I am interested to see this report claims that £100m a year is wasted on returned medication which is unused but has to be disposed of. I imagine this figure is in reality much higher from my own experiences at my pharmacy. I’ve read reports that claim only 20% of patients actually take their medication properly, a fact I can well believe.

What concerns me is the huge spiralling effect this has. Typically those who don’t take their medication properly are the most clinically vulnerable in our society, such as the elderly. Yet, as pharmacists we have been discouraged by the Government, practically and financially, to assist those patients with ways to get the most benefit from their medication. In the past, and still today, pharmacists have helped patients get the right dose of every drug at the right time using a variety of different types of support, largely funded out of pharmacists own pockets.

I am also MD of a company that produces 7-day packs for patients who need help to take the right dosage at the right time. These are packed by the pharmacist from the GP’s prescription. While I’m pleased to see these packs are selling better than ever (4.3 million weekly packs were used in the UK in 2006) which means there are pharmacists out there willing and able to offer this sort of service, I am constantly frustrated that they receive relatively little support – again practically and financially – to do this.

It makes me so angry as it is such a false economy to restrict pharmacists to providing support to the disabled only, which is what the Government does today. If the Government would only help fund more pharmacists to be able to offer this service to more patients, the reduction in wasted medicines would be huge! As would the reduction in needless trips to hospital, the number of patients going into long term care unnecessarily early and the strains on A&E departments.

The clinical impact upon the quality of patient care arising from pharmacists providing this special service is now clear from reports such as the JAMA study. The economic benefits still need to be fully analysed, but it seems clear that properly assessed patients who receive this valuable service, will cost the Health Service less.

I hope the Department of Health and Lord Hunt take this opportunity to look at the huge amount of money being wasted and make the right decision - to allocate funds to improving patient compliance to medication, in turn saving what is likely to be a more substantial sum in the process.

Please let’s stop this short-termist approach to saving money and focus on improving patient care!

Peter Williams, Blackburn, Lancashire

The NHS would save £££££ if GPs could make people realize that antidepressants weren't going to solve life's problems. If you don't like your job, have a pile of debt or have problems with your family etc, antidepressants aren't going to change any of that. People need to admit their difficulties, face them and deal with them as best they can, that's life and we need to get on with it.

Ruth, Edinburgh,

When I was last still living in the UK (2001) the problem was getting the drugs you needed prescribed - or prescribed in time! If I had a chest infection I couldn´t get antibiotics (invariably needed as I very well knew) on a Friday night. I had to wait till Monday to get it! By then the infection had well set in and I could expect to wait two weeks to recover (working at the same time, of course) instead of one week had I been able to just go to the chemist, explain the problem and get it over the counter. This I now do to the definitely improved management of my health, and the chemist offers me automatically the hoice of generic or branded.

We also hear of patients around the UK being denied life-saving drugs because the health authority in which they live won´t issue them.

And now, apparently, too many drugs are being prescribed, or too many expensive ones where generic ones will do!

The nanny state is not only bad for health and tyrannical, but grossly inefficient.

A L Sen, Mijas, Spain