The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 277 No 7432 p760
23/30 December 2006

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News summary

NPC launches campaign to improve statin prescribing

Resources to support high quality, cost effective prescribing and medicines management of statins are available through an online campaign, launched last week by the National Prescribing Centre.

The campaign website provides various new materials, such as audio workshops, recent work on the evidence base for statin prescribing and patient consultation aids.

Richard Seal, director of medicines management at the NPC, said: “This is the first time the NPC has pooled a range of resources and practical tools to help improve health care professionals’ knowledge base and to share good practice.”

The statin prescribing campaign materials are presented in the following categories:

• Policy and guidance
• Therapeutics
• Implementation resources
• Monitoring tools

“Many of the materials are templates that can be downloaded and customised for local use, others, such as those providing evidence base, cannot be changed,” said Mr Seal.

In October, the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement published “Better value, better care indicators”; one of the indicators was increasing low-cost statin prescribing. Mr Seal said that the campaign was partly in response to the request for support when changing statin prescribing in favour of low-cost products. Future campaigns are still to be agreed but may include other CV diseases and long-term conditions, Mr Seal told The Journal.