Optimising medicines, reducing harm: a system wide approach to safer prescribing
Supporting healthcare professionals across the East Midlands to identify patients at potential risk from problematic polypharmacy and support better conversations about medicines.
Polypharmacy is when people are prescribed many different medicines for one or more health conditions; this can lead to unintended consequences such as hospital admission, adverse side effects, and patients forgetting to take medication. Around 40% of over 65s living in their own homes are prescribed more than 10 different medicines.
Another challenge is that the overprescribing of medication has grown dramatically over the last 25 years, leading to unnecessary cost and potential harm to patients.
Our programme used three core principles:
- Population Health Management – using data to understand risks and identify patients for prioritisation for a review of their medications.
- Education and Training – hosting Action Learning Sets to help develop the confidence of primary care staff to stop unnecessary medicine prescribing.
- Public Behaviour Change – the ‘Me and My Medicines’ campaign sought to change public perceptions about a “pill for every ill” and encouraged patients to talk about their medicines. These were translated into twelve commonly used languages across the East Midlands, alongside easy read and audio versions.
We also collaborated with two Primary Care Networks in Nottingham and Northamptonshire, on a targeted prescribing initiative, which established a clear link between increased staff confidence and improved patient outcomes.
