Ministers to crack down on overprescription of medicines on the NHS

Government-commissioned review finds 10 per cent of drugs prescribed by primary care doctors are not wanted or needed

The government is to crack down on the NHS’s over use of medicines by encouraging doctors to challenge prescriptions dispensed in hospitals and point patients towards local wellness charities.

The move, which has been backed by health secretary Sajid Javid, comes after a government-commissioned review found that 10 per cent of medicines prescribed by doctors, nurses and other primary care workers are not wanted or needed.

Ministers have accepted all of the recommendations laid out in the review, led by England’s chief pharmaceutical officer Dr Keith Ridge, which seeks to “support shared decision-making between clinicians and patients” and calls for “cultural changes to reduce a reliance on medicines”.

Health professionals should instead increase “social prescribing”, it continues, which involves “helping patients to improve their health and wellbeing by connecting them to community services which might be run by the council or a local charity”.

The overhaul will be led by a new National Clinical Director for Prescribing who will oversee a three-year programme of changes, including “empowering” GPs to overrule prescriptions made in hospitals and the creation of an online platform for patients to log their medicines’ adverse effects.

Mr Javid has said that he looks forward to delivering the recommendations of the “important” review.

“This is an incredibly important review which will have a lasting impact on people’s lives and improve the way medicines are prescribed,” he said.

“With 15 per cent of people taking five or more medicines a day, in some cases to deal with the side effects of another medicine, more needs to be done to listen to patients and help clinical teams tackle overprescribing.”

The review found that around one in five hospital admissions in the over-65s are caused by the adverse effect of medicines as well as 6.5 per cent overall. It also recommends further research into why overprescribing disproportionately affects older people, people with disabilities and ethnic minorities.

While the NHS has come under significant pressure during the Covid-19 pandemic, the review into overprescription predates the pandemic.

In December 2018, then-health secretary Matt Hancock asked Dr Ridge to research the prevalence of medicines being prescribed for which either the harm outweighs the benefit or where patients don’t want or need them.