Petty, DR, Zermansky, AG and Alldred, DP (2014) The scale of repeat prescribing - time for an update. BMC Health Services Research, 14. 76. ISSN 1472-6963
Abstract
Background: The NHS spends billions of pounds annually on repeat prescriptions in primary care, but data on their extent and use is out of date. Understanding the scale of repeat prescribing and for whom it is prescribed is important for the NHS to plan services and develop policies to improve patient care. Method: Anonymous data on prescription numbers and practice population demographics was obtained from GP computer systems in a large urban area.Searches were conducted in November 2011 to identify the numbers of repeat items listed on individuals' repeat lists by sex and age.The proportion of all prescription items issued as repeats was identified by conducting searches on items issued as repeat and acute prescriptions. Results: In the year of study 4,453,225 items were issued of which 3,444,769 (77%) were repeats (mean 13 items per patient/annum) and 1,008,456 (23%) acute prescriptions (mean 3.9 items per patient per annum). The mean number of repeat Items per patient was 1.87 (range 0.45 ages 0-9 years; 7.1 ages 80-89 years). At least one repeat medicine was prescribed to 43% of the population (range 20% for ages 0-9; over 75% for ages 60+). Conclusion: A significant proportion of the population receive repeat prescriptions and the proportion increases with age. Whilst the proportion of repeat items to acute items has remained unchanged over the last two decades the number of repeat prescriptions items issued has doubled (from 5.8 to 13.3 items/patient/annum). This has implications for general practice workload, patient convenience, NHS costs and risk.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2014 Petty et al. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. |
Keywords: | Repeat prescribing; Prescribing analysis; Long-term medication |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Medicine and Health (Leeds) > School of Healthcare (Leeds) > Pharmacy (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 23 May 2016 14:20 |
Last Modified: | 23 May 2016 14:20 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1472-6963-14-76 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | BioMed Central |
Identification Number: | 10.1186/1472-6963-14-76 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:89564 |