The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 270 No 7236 p213
15 February 2003

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Quality and Safety in Health Care abstract (more)

Regular pharmacist visits would help prescribing in general practice

Regular visits from community pharmacists to advise general practitioners about prescribing issues would be helpful, according to a survey of GPs attitudes and behaviour towards prescribing costs.

Researchers analysed prescribing data for 1,097 GPs in England who responded to a questionnaire. Of these GPs, 33.1 per cent who were in the highest quintile for national average prescribing costs, 40.7 per cent in the middle and 31.7 per cent in the lowest category said that regular visits from a local community pharmacist to advise about prescribing issues would be helpful.

However, for the same groups, 69.1 per cent, 68.6 per cent and 69.8 per cent, respectively, said that they rarely or never received helpful feedback from local pharmacists about the drugs that they use for their patients.

The researchers also found that GPs from practices with high prescribing costs were more likely to work in dispensing practices, in practices with low income populations, in single handed practices and in practices without a GP trainer. In addition, these GP were almost twice as likely to see pharmaceutical company representatives in their surgery at least once a week than those with low prescribing costs and more than three times more likely to prescribe recently launched drugs to patients.

As part of the study, the researchers found that GPs with high prescribing costs were more likely to express dissatisfaction with their review methods for repeat prescribing than their colleagues whose prescribing costs were lower. They note that, in terms of pharmacists' input, there is already evidence of the acceptability and cost effectiveness of a visiting pharmacist to review the way in which repeat prescribing is organised in practices (Quality and Safety in Health Care 2003;12:29).