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Medicines Management
Issue no 1, pp1-6
January/February 2002

PCG pays Coventry pharmacists £2 per intervention

Coventry East PCG's medicines management pilot

Under the scheme community pharmacists are being asked to review repeat prescriptions and suggest changes where they believe there may be a cheaper or more cost-effective alternative.

Interventions during the pilot phase include suggesting a generic or cheaper form of the drug concerned, and pharmacists will also be asked to check doses, strengths, quantities and duplication of items on prescriptions.

Pharmacies file a copy of the intervention with the PCG, and send another copy to a facilitator at the practice for discussion with the prescriber.

Community pharmacists in Coventry are about to begin a medicines management project under which they will be paid for suggesting non-therapeutic changes to repeat prescriptions.

The project, called the Prescription Review and Intervention Scheme with Education (PRISE), is being piloted by Coventry East PCG, one of the 26 collaborative medicines management pilots being evaluated by the National Prescribing Centre. Pharmacists are being asked to review repeat prescriptions from the five GP practices and suggest changes to the prescription where they believe there may be a cheaper or more cost effective alternative. Pharmacies will be paid £2 by the PCG for each intervention they report using a paper-based system.

Mark Galloway, project manager for the medicines management collaborative at Coventry East PCG, said if the scheme proved successful it would be rolled out to all the practices in Coventry, which will fall within a single PCT after 1 April. Training of the community pharmacists has just begun, and Mr Galloway hopes to begin receiving data on the suggested interventions soon.

"A similar scheme at Rugby PCG has achieved significant cost savings, and we hope we're going to achieve all that and more," Mr Galloway said.

He added that education would form a vital part of the project. "Studies have shown that interventions are much more successful if they are actioned by a pharmacist coming into the practice rather than leaving to the GP, so we will be going into practices and looking at the reports."