Medicines Optimisation

By focusing on the right medication for the right patient at the right time, medicines optimisation can prevent unnecessary spending on ineffective or inappropriate treatments. This ensures that patients receive the most suitable medications and leads to fewer adverse drug reactions (ADRs) and hospital admissions. With the annual cost of hospital admissions caused by primary care ADRs reaching £87 million, this is an important step in managing costs.

What’s more, by prioritising medicines optimisation NHS organisations can better identify drugs that might be stopped, reduced, or switched to a more affordable alternative without compromising efficacy.

By regularly reviewing medications and involving patients in decision-making, medicines optimisation can play a pivotal role in enhancing medicines safety. By ensuring the correct use of drugs, tailored to the patient's specific needs organisations can reduce the risk of medication errors and adverse drug reactions . These incidents can not only have a profound impact on patient outcomes but also add extra financial burden on the health service.

Studies have shown that significant waste occurs due to unused medications. Medicines optimisation helps identify and eliminate unnecessary prescriptions, preventing the accumulation of wasted drugs.

This approach also enhances patient adherence, ensuring that medications are taken as prescribed and not overused, thus minimising waste. Reducing waste is vital for the NHS at this time, as it ensures that limited resources are channelled more efficiently towards improving patient care and alleviating financial pressures.

Formulary adherence ensures safe, effective, and cost-effective prescribing within a healthcare system like the NHS. By promoting awareness among prescribers about the benefits of following the formulary and ensuring they have appropriate guidance at hand, medicines optimisation helps in reducing unnecessary prescriptions, minimising adverse drug reactions, and improving best practice.

Medicines optimisation strategies and solutions help prescribing efficiency, reducing waste, and optimising the use of limited resources. It ensures patients receive the most effective and appropriate treatments, thereby decreasing costly hospital admissions and readmissions due to medication errors or adverse drug reactions.

With NHS expenditure on medicines surpassing £18 billion annually, optimising medicines use can lead to significant cost-savings at a time when the health service is dealing with immense financial challenges as well as increased patient demand.

The NHS faces the challenge of aligning patient care and rising patient demand with the UK’s target of net-zero carbon emissions by 2040. Medicines optimisation strategies and solutions support NHS organisations in achieving environmental sustainability and meeting their targets by promoting the efficient use of medications. Switching to more environmentally friendly devices such as greener inhalers when appropriate, thus reducing pharmaceutical waste and lowering the carbon footprint.

Medicines optimisation plays a crucial role in reducing overprescribing by ensuring that patients receive the most appropriate medications for their conditions at the right time, thereby minimising unnecessary prescriptions.

Medicines optimisation helps to reduce overprescribing by identifying high-risk patients and enabling targeted deprescribing, which in turn can help to tackle challenges like problematic polypharmacy and reduce anticholinergic burden.

It also advocates for the appropriate use of antibiotics, empowering Medicines Optimisation Teams to proactively pinpoint inappropriate prescribing trends or by facilitating the appropriate prescribing of antibiotics at the point of care.

This holistic approach delivers the best value for medicines by reducing overprescribing, improving health outcomes and reducing the burden on healthcare systems.

A good medicines optimisation strategy is focussed on a patient-centric approach - ensuring that patients are actively involved in their treatment plans through structured medication reviews and assessing the effectiveness and necessity of prescribed medicines.

It should incorporate both proactive management and point-of-care approaches; proactively it means finding potential medication issues before they arise, while at the point of care it ensures that decisions are made based on the most current, relevant and patient-specific information.

Lastly, a joined-up approach is essential. This ensures that all healthcare stakeholders and providers within a footprint are aligned in their goals for medicines optimisation, facilitating seamless communication and collaboration across different teams. This holistic approach improves the quality of care and maximises the value derived from medicines, ultimately benefiting both patients and the healthcare system as a whole.