Over 11,000 scripts written by pharmacists in 2005
Over 11,000 prescriptions were written by pharmacist supplementary prescribers in England in 2005, statistics
issued by the Department of Health last week reveal.
David Pruce, director of practice and quality improvement at the Royal
Pharmaceutical Society, said that the figures were encouraging and that
he would expect the number of prescriptions written by supplementary
prescribers to continue to increase during 2006. “The DoH figure
really reflects the fact that during 2005 the number of supplementary
prescribers steadily increased. What will be interesting would be to
see how much that will increase by the end of next year,” he added.
The data also show that, compared with 2004, the net ingredient cost
for prescriptions dispensed in the community in England fell by 1.8 per
cent (to £7.9bn), and that the total number of prescriptions dispensed
increased by 5.0 per cent (to 720 million). The average net ingredient
cost per item fell from £11.78 in 2004 to £11.02 in 2005
and the number of prescription items per person increased by 4.3 per
cent to 14.3 in 2005.
The reductions in net ingredient cost are principally, the DoH says,
a result of the new arrangements for generics formulations, as set out
in Part VII of the Drug Tariff under Category M, and the new Pharmaceutical
Price Regulation Scheme, introduced in January 2005.
Lipid-regulating drugs remain the most expensive category of prescribed
medicines, even though their overall cost fell by £144.2m to £625.0m
and by 32.7 per cent per item. The reduction in cost for lipid-regulating
drugs is principally a result of a 56.7 per cent fall in the cost of
simvastatin and a 66.8 per cent fall in the cost of pravastatin,
as a result of Category M price changes, the DoH says. |
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Pharmaceutical Journal
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