On this page
The benefits of this project
Benefits for Your Patients
- Reduced risk of medication errors & side effects
- Less confusion over multiple or outdated medications
- Patient empowerment and education
- Reduced unnecessary journeys to correct or return prescriptions
Benefits for Your Practice
- Reduced financial waste from overprescribing
- Reduced administrative burden
- Liberated work hours for health professional time
Benefits for The Planet
- Decreased pharmaceutical waste
- Less pharmaceutical pollution
- Reduced unnecessary manufacturing and packaging of medications
- Less impact on biodiversity
Opportunity for improvement
- It is estimated that £300 million of NHS-prescribed medications are wasted each year. This pharmaceutical waste is not only a significant financial burden but also contributes to the 156,000 tonnes of clinical waste produced annually by the NHS. The environmental impact includes challenges with the disposal of unused medicines, contribution to antimicrobial resistance, and loss of biodiversity though pharmaceutical contamination of water sources.
- This project targets preventable waste, focusing on instances where patients may stockpile medication ‘just in case’ or receive all items on repeat prescription regardless of need.
- Once medications leave the pharmacy, they cannot be reused, even if returned. However, if patients are encouraged to review and return any unnecessary prescriptions before leaving the pharmacy, these can potentially be reissued to other patients, reducing waste.
- This project aims to reduce preventable pharmaceutical waste by improving patient education around repeat prescriptions and encouraging checking prescriptions before leaving the pharmacy (see disclaimers).
- You might like to create a SMART goal for this project e.g. to reduce the total number of repeat prescriptions issued by the practice in a 1-month period by >2% within the next 3 months.
How to carry out this project
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Baseline data
Run an IT search to look at the total number of repeat prescriptions issued by the practice in the last month.
We hope to provide downloadable IT searches for EMIS & System 1 soon. In the meantime, you could use our EMIS and SystmOne search guides to create your own. Open Prescribing and EPACT2 track prescribing data and may be another way to review the impact of your project. Your practice pharmacist should be able to help.
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Discuss
Chat to the practice lead team about medicines waste, repeat prescribing and how to improve it at the practice. Ask them to consider a patient education campaign.
Chat to the local community pharmacists to get their input. They will be invaluable in helping patients and providing consistent messaging. Your practice pharmacist will likely know how to contact them.
Chat to your practice participation group (PPG) about medicines waste and how they would like to see it improved.
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Patient education campaign
Create materials for a patient education campaign to reduce medicines waste. This might be as simple as sending out a single text message to all patients or more extensive e.g. adding posters + videos to waiting rooms & practice rooms, articles in patient and staff newsletters, leaflets to go in prescription bags, staff training sessions and patient group discussions. This is best done as a team if you are planning a wider campaign.
NHS Dorset ICBs ‘Only Order What You Need’ (OOWYN) campaign has some excellent examples. This webinar describes their project in more detail.
Resource: Medicines Waste Text Message – adapted from OOWYN
Help us reduce medicines waste – you can help. Only order what you really need. Check what medicine you already have at home before asking for more. If you’ve stopped taking something, tell your pharmacy team. That’s totally okay – it helps them look after you better. Before you leave the pharmacy, check your medicine. If something’s not right, give it back straight away – it can be used again! Got questions? Just ask your pharmacy team – they’re happy to help.
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Discuss again
Show the materials to the practice lead team, community pharmacists and PPG decide when to run the campaign.
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Run the campaign
Start the campaign and have regular check ins with the wider practice team, community pharmacists and PPG to ensure things are running smoothly.
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Post-intervention data collection
Re-run the IT search to look at the total number of repeat prescriptions issued by the practice in the month following the campaign.
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Study
Review the results, summarise learning, share with practice team + decide if any changes are needed to improve the process. Decide when to re-audit again to ensure the change has lasted e.g. 2-3 months and use the Project Monitoring form to keep track. Many practices run automatic searches at regular intervals – speak to your practice team about including this project in those searches.
How to scale this project up or down
| Please note - Use of this project requires NetworkPLUS membership. If you would like to share this project with others, please invite them to purchase their own membership—access must not be shared with non-members. |
To increase the impact of this project, consider engaging with your Primary Care Network (PCN), Cluster, local Integrated Care Board (ICB) or Healthcare board. Collaborating at these levels allows for coordinated implementation across multiple practices and ensures alignment with local prescribing priorities.
For example, Dorset ICB successfully used a multi-modal public engagement strategy. This included:
- Patient text messaging
- Posters in GP practices and pharmacies
- Smart radio ads
- Articles in free local newspapers
- Social media promotion
Case study
In February and March 2024, NHS Dorset ICB ran a big push to help people feel more in control of their medicines and cut down on waste. The Only Order What You Need campaign was led by the ICB and brought to life by GP practices and community pharmacies working together.
In just two months, prescriptions dropped by nearly 16,000 compared to the same time in 2023. This helped save £475,000 in prescription costs across primary care! Even better, by cutting down on unnecessary prescriptions, the campaign freed up around 1,085 hours of healthcare time – that’s the same as about 6,500 GP appointments!
A fantastic result for patients, the NHS, and our healthcare teams.
Check out this webinar for further details.
Only Order What You Need – NHS Dorset Integrated Care Board
Have you completed this QIP?
Tell us a little about your project in order to generate a certificate showing the probable benefits. This project may help with CQC evidence submission (see disclaimers).
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